The 100 Best Songs of the 2010s (Top 10)

We've come to the end of my list of the best songs of the decade.

I think these were the 10 best songs of the 2010s. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. For the Spotify playlist of all 100 songs, click here.


10. Ellie Goulding — "Lights"

The dance-club song of the decade.

(Unplugged.)




9. The Shins — "Simple Song"

"Well, this is just a simple song" — why put it in the top 10? How can you explain why you do or don't have an emotional response to certain music? Somehow, this song gives me chills when the piano comes in and the singing gets higher on: "I know that things can really get rough, when you go it alone…"

Click here if you want to listen to the song without the speaking that's added in this dark-comedy video:




8. St. Vincent — "Rattlesnake"

I don't have a strict rule of only one song per artist, but if I did then St. Vincent would be one of the most flagrant violators: my top 100 list has two of her solo songs, plus her collaboration with David Byrne. She isn't the only artist in my current top 10 who was also on my list last decade, but she's the only one who was in the top 10 for both decades.

St. Vincent is not just one of the great indie singer/songwriters, but also one of the most interesting guitarists around. 10 years ago I wrote about the decreasing importance of rock guitar, which has only continued decreasing, but St. Vincent shows us that you can still be relevant while using heavy guitar in unexpected ways.




7. Hozier — "Take Me to Church"

Lots of discussion of the lyrics at SongMeanings. Wikipedia notes that the video "follows a same-sex relationship in Russia and the violently homophobic backlash that ensues when the community learns of one of the men's sexuality."

Take me to church

I'll worship like a dog

At the shrine of your lies

I'll tell you my sins

And you can sharpen your knife

Hozier's soulful singing of the "Amen, amen…" part — relatively calm at first but passionate when the section is repeated later — clinches "Take Me to Church" as one of the high points of this decade of music.

(Cover with female vocals.)




6. Bent Knee — "Being Human"

This band from Boston is hard to categorize. Wikipedia says they play "multiple genres" including "art rock," "progressive rock," "industrial rock," "avant-garde," and "baroque pop."

Bent Knee has the confidence to take real risks.




5. Lana Del Rey — "Summertime Sadness"

This song is compellingly emotional by being simple and direct.

(Remix.)




4. Jónsi — "Animal Arithmetic"

After sadness, this comes bursting through — a song of pure, exuberant optimism.

Every time, everyone, everything's full of life

Every day, everywhere, people are so alive

We should all be, ohhh, alive! ...

Exist all in love and life!

In the second verse, Jónsi sings in his native language, Icelandic (as he often does in the band he's best known for, Sigur Rós).




3. Adele — "Rolling in the Deep"

Adele has one of the most powerful voices of the decade.




2. Janelle Monáe — "Cold War"

The video for this song from her 2010 debut album starts with no sound, until the screen tells us we're seeing "Take 1." The singer/songwriter described the process: “I remember crying during ‘Cold War’ [on the] first take. I didn’t know how that happened but it just did.... Then everybody else started to cry.”

I like the idea (however unlikely) that someone who hasn't paid attention to any music of the last 10 years is going through this whole list in order, so their whole view of Janelle Monáe was based on her contribution to "We Are Young," and then they get to this song…

(Mellow remix.)




1. Lorde — "Royals"

So many young musical prodigies try to impress us with their talents by emulating adults. One of the great things about how Lorde from New Zealand broke into the public consciousness at age 16 is that she seemed to feel no need to do that. She didn't sound like she was aspiring to mature respectability. She presented herself as a young person hanging out with other young people — but a unique young person who happens to be uncommonly reflective and expressive. This is just one of the standout songs from Lorde's debut album. That album is a pop masterpiece precisely because it doesn't feel like it's trying to be a masterpiece.




Bruce Springsteen radically transformed "Royals":




And honorable mention goes to this brilliant parody by Weird Al Yankovic — "Foil." You might think it's just one more Weird Al song about food, but wait till halfway through… Notice how he cleverly keeps two phrases from the original lyrics.




String quartet:




That's all — thanks for listening! To go back to songs #11 to 20, click here — and check the bottom of each post to keep going back or forward in the list.

Again, here's the full list of 100 songs plus runners-up. There's a Spotify playlist of the top 100 (with some bonus tracks at the end), and a separate playlist for the runners-up.

The 100 Best Songs of the 2010s (31-40)

More of the best songs of the decade…

(Click here for the whole list so far, with a Spotify playlist.)


40. Two Door Cinema Club — "What You Know"

Sounds like Death Cab for Cutie at times, especially when he sings in the chorus: "You don't want to be alone, you don't want to be alone…"




39. Tove Lo — "Not on Drugs"

Swedish pop with an edge.

(Remix.)




38. Britney Spears — "Till the World Ends"




37. Broken Bells — "Holding on for Life"




36. St. Vincent — "Cruel"




35. Fort Wilson Riot — "Love Song for Mabee Burlingham (Pieces of the War Pt. 1)"

Full disclosure, they're friends of mine, and the male singer/guitarist is a former bandmate.




34. Aloe Blacc — "Miss Fortune"

This singer/songwriter conjures up pictures and stories in sound.




33. Sia — "Chandelier"




32. Alan Hampton — "Keep it in Your Dreams"


31. Sky Ferreira - "Everything Is Embarrassing"




<—41 - 50

21 - 30 —>

The 100 Best Songs of the 2010s (91-100)

10 years ago, I listed the best songs of the decade, 2000 to 2009.

Now I'm doing it again: the best songs of the decade that's coming an end, 2010 to 2019.

(Click here for the whole list so far, with a Spotify playlist.)

The rules:

• I'm using the traditional definition of "song," meaning it has to be sung — no instrumentals.

• The song had to be released in 2010 or later. No covers of old songs.

All the usual caveats apply: that this kind of ranking is inevitably arbitrary, that the list is based on my opinions and tastes, etc. For instance, I'm not a big hip-hop fan, so don't expect to see that genre well-represented here (though my 2000-2009 list did include a hip-hop song at #22).

Check out some of these other song lists for different perspectives.

I'll roll out 10 songs per post, counting down from 100 to 1, and I should have the whole thing up before Christmas.

Here goes!


100. The Lumineers — "Ho Hey"




99. Jukebox the Ghost — "Jumpstarted"

Remind you of anyone?




98. CHVRCHES — "Never Ending Circles"

I like how it sounds like the singer's breath is incorporated into the instrumental backing.




97. Vampire Weekend — "Unbelievers"




96. David Byrne & St. Vincent — "Who"

A collaboration by two wonderfully weird musical geniuses.




95. Soundgarden — "Been Away for Too Long"

Full disclosure, this video stars my second cousin, Ariane Rinehart.




94. The National — "The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness"

The best song title of the decade?




93. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings — "I Learned the Hard Way"

Sharon Jones died in 2016, but her soul music lives on.

The song starts at 1:15 in this video.




92. Mumford & Sons — "I Will Wait"




91. The Zombies — "Chasing the Past"

It's still the time of the season for the Zombies.




81 - 90 —>

The top 10 songs of the first decade of the 2000s

After almost 200 songs, we've finally made it to the top 10 of the past 10 years.

(Click here for the whole list.)


10. Gnarls Barkley — "Crazy"




9. Sufjan Stevens — "Chicago"

Summer Anne, ranking this the 10th best song of the decade, says:

[I]f I ever made a church, my kind of church, we would worship outside, and this song would be our "Amazing Grace."

8. of Montreal — "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games"

Let's have bizarre celebrations!

7. Dresden Dolls — "Coin-Operated Boy"

This is an ingeniously constructed song. It starts out jaunty and full of innuendo for a few verses. The singer, Amanda Palmer, then takes the song deeper into her psyche by describing the songwriting process itself:

This bridge was written

To make you feel smitten-er

With my sad picture

Of girl getting bitter-er

The shift in the lyrics and music here (flowing arpeggios instead of percussive chords) seems to tell us we've left the physical world and entered her stream of consciousness. The bridge culminates with an obsessively repeated "I want it —," then "I want you —," then "I want a —," while the whole band mimics the repetitive, jerky movements of a wind-up toy (a lyrical and musical transition back to the verse). When Palmer finally finishes the sentence with the same words and melody that started the song ("... coin-operated boy"), her delivery has lost its previous childlike quality. She sounds weary from the one-sided relationship. At the end, the band winds down like a toy running out of batteries. Not only does Palmer's voice slow down along with everything else, but she sounds unexpectedly meek, as though it were dawning on her that she doesn't quite believe everything she's been singing.




6. St. Vincent — "Paris Is Burning"




5. The Postal Service — "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight"

I remember sitting in a cafe a few years ago, hearing this chorus for the first time — "You seem so out of context / In this gaudy apartment complex" — and thinking, "Hm, that's a pretty clever hook." Since then, I've probably listened to this song 100 times, and it still sounds startlingly new.




4. Franz Ferdinand — "Take Me Out"

The rock anthem of the decade.




3. Imogen Heap — "Hide and Seek"

Here's Imogen Heap's description of how this song came to be:

My favorite computer blew up on me. ... But I didn't want to leave the studio without having done anything that day. I saw the [DigiTech Vocalist Workstation] on a shelf and just plugged it into my little 4-track MiniDisc with my mic and my keyboard and pressed Record. The first thing that I sang was those first few lines, "Where are we? What the hell is going on?" I set the vocalist to a four-note polyphony, so even if I play 10 notes on the keyboard, it will only choose four of them. It's quite nicely surprising when it comes back with a strange combination. When it gets really high in the second chorus, that's a result of it choosing higher rather than low notes, so I ended up going even higher to compensate, above the chord. I recorded it in, like, four-and-a-half minutes, and it ended up on the album in exactly the structure of how it came out of me then. I love it because it doesn't feel like my song. It just came out of nowhere, and I'm not questioning that one at all.

The result sounds like a 21st-century version of a Renaissance madrigal.

Have you ever thought to yourself: if God is watching me and has to choose the single greatest 5 minutes of my life, what would they be? For Imogen Heap, the answer just might be those 5 minutes when she was creating this:




2. Arcade Fire — "No Cars Go"

The songwriting is almost embarrassingly simple, yet this is some of the most exciting music to come along in recent memory.

Between the click of the light and the start of the dream...

1. Regina Spektor — "Fidelity"

Spontaneous but refined, sincere but quirky, simple but complex. No song more beautifully encapsulates the spirit of this decade of music.




Regina alone, live:

The 100 best songs of the first decade of the 2000s (100-91)

Whatever you want to call the decade spanning 2000 to 2009 (the '00s, the aughts, the naughts), we're reaching the end of it. So it's time to take stock of the past 10 years by answering the question: What were the 100 best songs?

(Click here for the whole list.)

As far as this list is concerned, a "song" has to be sung. Instrumentals by Amon Tobin, Four Tet, Ratatat, and the Octopus Project might deserve to be mentioned in a discussion of the best music of the 2000s, but they won't be on this list.

Also, the original version of the song must have been released in 2000 or later — no covers of pre-2000 songs.

Here are some other people's lists:

Pitchfork's top 500 (to see the whole list without audio or Pitchfork's commentary, click here)

Summer Anne's top 125 (a personal, emotional list)

The Factual Opinion's top 100 + 100 runners-up (plenty of drum machines and subtle analysis)

Telegraph's top 100 (These aren't intended to be the best songs released in the past 10 years; they're the songs that "defined" the decade, dating as early as 1981)

50 Songs, 10 Years (with personal stories of how these songs affected the blogger)

NME's top 100

Largehearted Boy is keeping a meta-list of "best of the decade" music lists. (As well as song lists, there are also lists of the best albums, the best music videos, etc.)

Here we go…

100. The Shins — "Kissing the Lipless"

Possibly the silliest song title in the list.




99. Hanne Hukkelberg — "A Cheater's Armory "




98. The Polyphonic Spree — "Light and Day/Reach for the Sun"




97. Edith Frost — "Cars and Parties"

Here's a video of her lip-synching the song on a cable-access show (her words).




96. Bon Iver — "Skinny Love"

This song, along with the rest of the album it's on, emerged accidentally from a state of illness and hibernation in northern Wisconsin. (Wikipedia has the details.)




95. Björk — "It's Not up to You"




94. Jem — "They"




93.  The White Stripes — "Seven Nation Army"

Pure rock.




92. Noisettes — "Never Forget You"




91. St. Vincent — "Marry Me"

Summer Anne put this song on her list and said:

many of her songs, lyrically, are like little puzzles waiting for you to solve them. They are personal, seemingly, but also cryptic and distant. She doesn’t hit you over the head with anything. This song is the perfect example. The lyrics are perfectly poetic and, like good poetry, grow with meaning every time they are studied:

But you, you’re a rock with a heart like a socket

I can plug into at will

And will you guess when I come around next

I hope your open sign is blinking still

Runners-up for the best songs of the first decade of the 2000s

As promised, I'm going to list the 100 greatest songs of the 2000s. But first, here are 100 runners-up, in no particular order…

(Click here for the whole list.) 


Goldfrapp — "Caravan Girl"



The New Pornographers — "My Rights Versus Yours" — WATCH

Grizzly Bear — "Southern Point" — LISTEN

The Weepies — "Nobody Knows Me at All" — WATCH

Solange — "I Decided" — WATCH

MGMT — "The Youth"— WATCH

Regina Spektor — "Better" — WATCH

Death Cab for Cutie — "Title and Registration" – WATCH

Esperanza Spalding — "I Adore You" — LISTEN

Dirty Projectors — "Cannibal Resource" — LISTEN

Radiohead — "Everything in Its Right Place"



The Thrills — "One Horse Town" — WATCH

Rilo Kiley — "I Never" — LISTEN

Lady Gaga — "Paparazzi" — WATCH

The Postal Service — "Such Great Heights" — WATCH (cover by Iron & Wine)

Rufus Wainwright — "Shadows" — LISTEN

The Apples in Stereo — "Energy" — WATCH

Phoenix — "Lisztomania" — WATCH

of Montreal — "The Repudiated Immortals" — LISTEN

Yeah Yeah Yeahs — "Runaway" — WATCH

Hot Hot Heat — "Talk to Me, Dance with Me"



Elliott Smith — "Son of Sam" — WATCH

The Notwist — "One with the Freaks" — LISTEN

Black Eyed Peas — "Boom Boom Pow" — WATCH

Alicia Keys — "Karma" — WATCH

Dido — "White Flag" — WATCH

The Dodos — "God?" — LISTEN

Spoon — "The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine" — WATCH

Death Cab for Cutie — "Tiny Vessels" — LISTEN

Lali Puna — "Small Things" — LISTEN

The Bird and the Bee — "Love Letter from Japan"



St. Vincent — "Your Lips are Red" — WATCH

Radiohead — "2 + 2 = 5 (The Lukewarm.)" — WATCH

Iron & Wine — "Boy with a Coin" — WATCH

Clue to Kalo — "Seconds When It’s Minutes" — LISTEN

Herbert (feat. Dani Siciliano & Shingai Shoniwa) — "The Audience" — WATCH

Sufjan Stevens — "All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace!" — LISTEN

Christina Aguilera — "Beautiful" — WATCH

Bosque Brown — "White Dove" — LISTEN

Yeasayer — "2080" — LISTEN

The Dresden Dolls — "Good Day"



Modest Mouse — "Float On" — WATCH

Arcade Fire — "My Body Is a Cage" — LISTEN

Hanne Hukkelberg — "Ease" — LISTEN

Styrofoam (feat. Ben Gibbard) — "Couches in Alleys" — LISTEN

The Go! Team — "Ladyflash" — WATCH

Monsters Are Waiting — "Crazy Love" — LISTEN

1990s — "See You at the Lights" — LISTEN

Wilco — "I'm the Man Who Loves You" — WATCH

John Mayer — "Daughters" — WATCH

Camera Obscura — "Let’s Get Out of This Country"



The Shins — "New Slang" — WATCH

Psapp — "Hi" — WATCH

Cut Copy — "Feel the Love" — LISTEN 

Amerie — "1 Thing" — WATCH

David Byrne & Brian Eno — "Strange Overtones" — WATCH

Lenka — "Trouble Is a Friend" — WATCH

Decoder Ring — "Traffic" — LISTEN

Foo Fighters — "The Pretender" — WATCH

Beck — "Lonesome Tears" — WATCH

Andrew Bird — "A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left"



of Montreal — "The Party’s Crashing Us"— LISTEN

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings — "100 Days, 100 Nights" — WATCH

Spoon — "The Way We Get By" — WATCH

Goldfrapp — "Ride a White Horse" — WATCH

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — "Is This Love?" — LISTEN

Estelle (feat. Kanye West) — "American Boy" — WATCH

Jason Mraz — "I'm Yours" — LISTEN

The Strokes — "Someday" — WATCH

Death Cab for Cutie — "Transatlanticism" — LISTEN

Norah Jones — "Sinkin’ Soon"



St. Vincent — "Actor out of Work" — WATCH

The Sea and Cake — "Left Side Clouded" — WATCH

OutKast — "B.O.B. — Bombs over Baghdad" — WATCH

Animal Collective — "Peacebone" — LISTEN

Sara Bareilles — "Bottle It Up" — WATCH

Jenny Lewis — "Black Sand" — LISTEN

nine inch nails — "all the love in the world" — LISTEN

The Postal Service — "We Will Become Silhouettes" — WATCH

Goldfrapp — "Monster Love" — LISTEN

TV on the Radio — "Dreams"



Ms. John Soda — "Hands" — LISTEN

The Temper Trap — "Sweet Disposition" — WATCH

Arcade Fire — "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" — WATCH

M. Ward (feat. Zooey Deschanel) — "Never Had Nobody Like You" — LISTEN

The Strokes — "Hard to Explain" — WATCH

of Montreal — "Forecast Fascist Future" — LISTEN

Rihanna — "Disturbia" — WATCH

Radiohead — "Optimistic" — WATCH

Death Cab for Cutie — "Soul Meets Body" — WATCH

Bruce Springsteen — "The Rising"



MGMT — "Electric Feel" — WATCH

Sophie Ellis-Bextor — "Murder on the Dance Floor" — LISTEN

Amy Winehouse — "Rehab" — WATCH

Franz Ferdinand — "Jacqueline" — LISTEN

My Brightest Diamond — "Golden Star" — LISTEN

Green Day — "Wake Me Up When September Ends" — LISTEN

Broken Social Scene — "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl" — WATCH

St. Vincent — "Black Rainbow" — LISTEN

The Postal Service — "Brand New Colony" — LISTEN

Music Friday: 4 more covers

Continuing with the theme from last week, here are 4 more covers, each one followed by the original.

5. The Project (info) covers...



...Tchaikovsky.




6. Ben Gibbard (of Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie fame) covers...



...Michael Jackson.



7. Hanne Hukkelberg (blogged previously) covers...



...the Kinks.




8. M. Ward (featuring Zooey Deschanel) covers...



...Buddy Holly.

"This LP is basically not very good."

This review of Chris Cornell's new album, Scream, is actually more useful than the average review by a professional music critic. (Via ChordStrike.)

In that spirit, I wrote a review of St. Vincent's yet-to-be-released album Actor (which I was anticipating last Music Friday). Here it is, in full, originally appearing as a status update on Facebook:

John Althouse Cohen thinks the new St. Vincent album is pretty good but not as good as Marry Me. Better-produced, though.

You might read reviews of the album in Pitchfork or Rolling Stone, where the critics are trying to (1) satisfy people's word-count expectations and (2) show off their (a) facility with metaphor, (b) aptitude for lyrical analysis, and (c) knowledge of musical influences (probably mentioning Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell), but my Facebook status update tells you everything you need to know.

If you're a fan of St. Vincent based on Marry Me, it's worth getting Actor, but expect a bit of "sophomore slump." If you don't have either of her albums, get Marry Me first, and only get Actor if you really like Marry Me. Any ink spilled, or bandwidth hogged, dissecting this album in any further detail will be superfluous.

St. Vincent and Regina Spektor, part 2

I haven't been this excited about two upcoming albums in at least a couple years.

There's St. Vincent's second album, to be released May 5, and Regina Spektor's fifth album, sometime in June.

[UPDATE: You can hear the St. Vincent album streaming online, free at NPR's site, for two weeks starting on April 21.]

I blogged about both of them in my inaugural Music Friday post.

Here's "Actor out of Work," a song St. Vincent has pre-released from her upcoming album, Actor (via her website):



I'm glad to hear her trademark sound intact: lovely compositions reminiscent of Paul McCartney or Brian Wilson, incongruously overlaid with grinding dissonance.

Music I've been listening to: St. Vincent, Regina Spektor, Goldfrapp, Mika

New blog feature: Music Friday!

A friend sent me and others this email:

now, my musicphile friends, i have a special request. ... in the spirit of spring cleaning, i'm trying to knock the cobwebs out of my itunes library. ... i think its time to expand my horizons. can you help guide me to greener pastures? what are you listening to lately? what should i be listening to?

Here's what I emailed her in response:

St. Vincent — Based on the few 2007 albums I've heard, hers was far and away the best album of 2007. She's a seasoned indie guitarist who played with Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree (under her real name, Annie Clark), but this was her solo debut. This is exactly the kind of genre-defying music I'm searching out right now, so I'm hoping this is the beginning of an amazing career for her.

[Jesus Saves, I Spend]

Her song "Marry Me" (which has a bridge with lyrics that were probably quoted in every review of her album)  has already been drunkenly covered by the Dresden Dolls' singer, Amanda Palmer.

Regina Spektor -- 

Regina Spektor is the most wonderful musical person to come along in quite a while!

[Fidelity]

[Us]

Both songs in those YouTube clips have this feel to them that's pretty rare in music — the only way I can describe it is that you (or at least I) get this feeling of "This is it — this is what it's all about." [Added later: I talked about that more in this post on classical music.]


Goldfrapp — Their new album, Seventh Tree, seems destined to end up on every "best of 2008" list. Their older stuff was very anchored in the '80s, but the new album has more of a '60s/'70s vibe. There's something poignant about how earnestly retro they are. If you have any interest in buying physical CDs anymore, get Seventh Tree for the packaging (bonus DVD, nice artwork, etc.). Here are two great songs from it:

[Caravan girl]

[A & E]

Mika — I have the sense that he's big in Europe but not that well known in the US. (He was initially raised in Lebanon, then his family moved to Europe to escape the conditions there.) Here's a song in which he totally rips off Queen (even alluding to it in the pre-chorus) but still comes up with something original and infectious: