the top 50 best songs of 2019
I’ve said in the past that this is the list that requires the most effort to make. And in previous years, that normally refers most to the amount of work in sorting through thousands of songs to narrow down the very best… but 2019 was different. Because in comparison with the huge number of albums I reviewed in 2018, this year was a little easier, a little more straightforward, but has to come alongside me saying that if my other axiom is true - that this list is always the most personal in comparison with the albums or hits - that changes how you sort and categorize this sort of art.
Or to put it bluntly, in a hard year where the music that connected with me most hit an emotional core that’s a little more fragile, forming this list required me to drill into those emotions a lot when assembling this list. And that means there are more songs of a specific rawness and intensity that not only is pretty rare, but also harder on balance to absorb, especially when I’m trying to say new things about them. It’s not true for all of them, to be sure, but in previous years where I’d have only a few songs like ‘Blackout’ by Ruston Kelly and ‘Happiness’ by Deaf Havana where I couldn’t really say much because of personal experiences I’d rather not reveal… yeah, 2019 has a lot more of that. And I understand that will prompt conjecture and questions whether or not I’m really okay, of which I’ll thank you for your concern, but things have gotten better and are looking up, so please don’t worry.
I guess that counts as my disclaimer, let’s get to the list proper, starting with…
Yes, I know, I don’t cover enough electronic music, that’ll probably change next year thanks to reopening the Patreon schedule, but I will say that coming together with fellow critic The Wonky Angle to find the best Chemical Brothers song in years was thrilling as all hell. I love the frank sample of poetry from Michael Brownstein that has the feel of a starfleet captain’s utopian vision, the gleaming cascades of interweaving keys and whirling samples, genuinely propulsive grooves, and every change-up that feels note-perfect. It might have the organic feel of old-fashioned transcendent optimism, but that’s still transcendent in my books.
First real controversy of this list by even including Gabbie Hanna, but what’s always worked about her material is framing that never places her completely in the right and her natural bent for theatricality, which is most accentuated here on her best song to date. And I love how the mood and precise control of this song shifts damn near on a dime, how that perfect day shifts from blissed out iconic moment to memorial, and Hanna’s command of fractured heartbreak, rage, grief, and a desire to cling to a hope anything was real is just raw enough to feel real, intensified by an uncomfortably close vocal pickup and how the glassy elegance of the keys and strings is fractured by the hammering percussion. I said it in the review and I’ll say it here again: there’s a ton of raw talent in the writing and production here, you’ll want to keep your eyes out even beyond the tea.
This, on the other hand, is pure, over-the-top power metal awesomeness that’s only not higher because one of the most striking hooks of the year is held back by several frustrations in the composition. The song runs too long, the final passage doesn’t really connect to or call back to the main melodic motifs outside of the lyrics, and said lyrics don’t really have the dramatic complexity of, say, ‘Let The Storm Descend Upon You’ from Ghostlights. That said, the hard pivot away from shallow light to the welcoming acceptance of ‘darkness’ has all the high camp bombast that has been Avantasia’s hallmark, and again, one of the most striking hooks of 2019. More of this, please!
The most stark running theme of This Was Supposed To Be Fun was the Epic Beard Men challenging their audience with seeming contradictions on incredibly even framing, and ‘You Can’t Tell Me Shit’ is a the sort of leveling belligerence that nails this. Not only does Sage Francis have some pretty correct and even provocative statements on… everything, but it’s placed alongside absurd conspiracy theory mongering or just pure delusion, and then when you think you can dismiss all of it and the receipts, he shows the human underbelly that on some level we share, that obstinate stubbornness that be bent in so many directions, all against blazingly colourful chiptune that demands to get in your face - and also emblematic of how technology and the Internet are their own “leveling” of the playing field. Receipts upon receipts indeed…
Jetty Bones’ - EP is powerful in being transitional, and this is the final stage of it, where she now has to question a partner for digging into the same wounds… or maybe she’s just second-guessing something that her heart is saying is real? Either way, Jetty Bones’ indie rock / emo blend gets the plainspoken finale but also understand the lingering messy question that comes in finding love again after trauma, where you gaslight yourself and your capacity to give and receive love. And I love how between the gentle acoustics, padded keys, and beautiful interweaving vocal lines that might as well serve as her subconscious, we get a note of hope. …yeah, for me this year, this was one.
I’m kicking myself I didn’t review Little Brother’s album more formally, because man it grew on me and this was probably the biggest standout. And not unlike a few other entries coming on this list, it’s a love song that picks up its power through phenomenal but normal-feeling wordplay. Phonte and Big Pooh have always balanced maturity and Phonte’s imperfect but soulful singing only accentuates that, but there’s something so warm and wholesome about its subtle embrace of emotionality both within a great love song and in the larger context of the album, subverting projections of black masculinity to really transcend into something deeper. As well as being insanely quotable, when you pair it with a supple bass and a great Utopia sample, it’s a song that leans into contented happiness - and man, I needed that this year.
So remember when i said that Epic Beard Men were looking to challenge easy moral judgements with complicated framing? Yeah, ‘Pistol Dave’ is the most stark example, a character portrait of the sort of hard-edged, overcompensating, generally insufferable but somewhat pathetic guy you meet working shows - hell, the level of detail is almost uncomfortably real especially coming from a guy who hangs around metal crowds… but for as much as Sage Francis and B. Dolan show a lot of disgust and knowing insight into this character, most of it bad, then Slug steps up to play him directly as the beat switches from fractured, murky soul to an oily trap breakdown for a disgusting verse of his own… but the trick is just below the surface, not only with Blue Raspberry’s anguished yearning showing exactly how attractive men like Pistol Dave can be, but also even some of the allure to that legacy. Again, a song like this is never easy - wasn’t it supposed to be fun?
Well, this song is fun in a more straightforward way, and easily Emotional Oranges’ best cut to date. A decidedly 80s-inspired slice of R&B in its guitars, keys, and percussion, but impressively modern in both its groove and its vulnerability, a song full of tentative reconciliation in a conflicted relationship where both partners know they could be chasing something more easy… but have returned to each other to take that risk again. And when you pair it with outright stellar vocal interplay, impressive chemistry, and a sense of groove-driven sensuality that was near-unmatched in R&B… yeah, I really hope Emotional Oranges sticks around, because this is something special.
We’re back into the outright ridiculous, and a song that I honestly did not expect to make my list, mostly because Devin Townsend going chamber music fused with extreme metal is the sort of thing that should not work, especially off of Empath. And yet, for as much as I want to laugh about the high melodrama of it all, I love that the song basically serves as a dissection of itself only to find some core of emotive affection, sold with the classical pomp and circumstance that would never abide such subject matter! And unlike the rest of the album, there’s little to no overproduction: the strings are allowed to be lush, the crescendo is allowed to develop off naturally, the metal elements are subtle - until they’re not - and Devin Townsend proves that he’s one of the most dynamic and expressive singers working today! Hell, with this, the question isn’t why, but why the hell not!?
So this is nightmare fuel - so why is it the best song on Magdalene and not getting nearly the attention it deserves? I mean, I get some of it: gothic but on the unsettling primal level through contorting synths, the child choir warped for ominous warning, a high Catholic aesthetic screaming through layers of crushing degeneracy as the minor key pianos fracture against the implacable bass, it has an attention to texture that screams of Nicolas Jaar’s involvement. But fka twigs deserves the vast majority of credit here, both in hitting the ragged tension and burned-out fury of the relationship with any elegance at all, but also storytelling that shows the relationship hitting the searing light of day and being blasted by heat and overexposure. This is a song that makes you feel like you’re trudging a marathon uphill while being burned alive - so how could it not make this list?
Reba McEntire made one of her best albums in decades with Stronger Than The Truth, and this cut cowritten by Erin Enderlin is the sort of gutpunch you almost don’t see coming if you don’t the cowriter… and then you find out and it makes all too much sense. But it’s still a wallop of hard reality that hurts coming from an older woman like Reba - where the protagonist of the song sees her dreams of romance fading with time even as the alcohol flows freely, and standards fall a lot lower when the nights get cold and lonely. It might as well read as a sequel to ‘The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter’, and a painfully bittersweet one at that… but it works, especially opposite the touches of pedal steel, prominent fiddle, and a sharply tense groove that knows exactly when to open up to accentuate the tragedy. Heartbreaker of a song… and yet all too real.
And yet from a song characterized by restraint and longing unfulfilled, we have a dream country song that is all about taking that step to fall and love too hard, and who are you to tell her otherwise? And what I love about this song is a similar sense of drama that anchored Lydia Loveless’ album Real from 2016 - a risky choice made with self-awareness, but taken all the same, even if you know the mess is just out of frame. But Michaela Anne does not frame herself as hard-bitten or jaded - her sweeter tone balanced against the keening atmosphere and brittle acoustics to subtly ramp up the tension, there’s just enough genuine yearning to make a lump rise in your throat for the horrible fate that might come in this risk. But she’s taking that risk of her own free will and will own the consequences of her passion… why do I get the feeling Dessa was talking about this sort of girl on ‘Ride’, and yet why do I empathize so strongly with them both…
Oh, you didn’t think this list was bleak enough yet? Yeah, this one snuck up on me, another impeccable character portrait from Emily Scott Robinson, this time of the man on the edge of poverty and wracked with his own demons that might as well be Epic Beard Men's Pistol Dave painted with unflinching sobriety and no melodrama… but just like that song, there’s empathy here for the lonely, forgotten man struggling to get by with cheap beer, pills, and desperate, unanswered prayers. And it’s a cold song too - I don’t quite put Emily Scott Robinson in the dream country subgenre but there are traces of that sound here with her command of atmosphere in letting the chill guitars simmer in the mist off the spare acoustic line and the quaver that slides into her hook. It’s haunting, at some points it can feel way too real, and it’s another moment why Emily Scott Robinson is one of the best new writers in music right now, period.
Whereas Hozier might be one of the best raw performers working in music today, because even if Wasteland, Baby! was a considerable step down from his debut, I can’t deny he’ll sell a song like this with wry intensity and firepower. What I’ve always loved about Hozier is how utterly unashamed he is of the sexual appetites in his music that show a comfort and nuance that’s both refreshing and more than a little kinky - and he’s going to do it on a song all about taking the piss out of stuffy social conventions! And when you pair it with that massively catchy guitar lick, punchy drumline, and coursing bass, and Hozier’s raw expressiveness, this is horny on main and flagrantly reveling in it - not the only song like it in 2019 that’ll make this list, for the record, but we’ll get to them.
One of the things I love about SHREDDERS’ second album - especially Sims’ razor-sharp verse here - is the lack of punches pulled with its politics, because while there’s always been a collectivist anti-authoritarian streak to the Doomtree crew, this is the sort of flagrant and targeted attack we just haven’t seen. ‘Vanilla ISIS’ has the sort of interlinked focus you’d more likely see on leftist YouTube than across the vast majority of hip-hop today, not just highlighting their toxic idiocy and attempts to co-opt smarter media than them - the Rick & Morty reference is inspired - but also highlighting how most of them have no individuality and their endless diatribes are just goddamn boring! And that’s why P.O.S’s last verse is so essential - drawing a connection back to a version of cool that’s persisted among guys with style, but also highlighting just how easy it can be to get sucked into it. Also, when you provide a lean but burly groove with enough wiry melody to stick off the punchy drums, and an inspired switch-back to ‘Xanthrax’ from the last album… yeah, this gets the people going.
So when I showed this song to my parents - because I grew up with Reba thanks to them and I figured they’d be curious - they noticed her voice had thinned out a little since her late-80s/early 90s heyday. And that was true - and if anything it makes this song have even more of a gutpunch coming from someone to which this might feel more familiar, where she tells the story of a widower slowly losing his mind to Alzheimer’s as he tries to hold onto a belief his wife will come back for him. And what’s so damn sad is that there’s no break point or moment of relief, and nobody in his family has the heart to tell him she’s not coming back, and that if he sees her again, it’ll be on the other side. And when matched with the sort of stripped down but gently organic neotradtional country instrumentation… yeah, Reba still has it.
I’m shocked how much this stuck with me, and it’s probably the most outwardly conventional song this list: a folk torch song with a big crescendo that makes a few passing glances at old Mumford & Sons thanks to the layered vocal harmonies and strings. But ‘Avalanche’ is so goddamn beautiful with its close acoustics and Magnus Jacobsen’s willowy delivery that you almost miss how enveloping or even smothering his professions of love are… but also self-aware on how fleeting and outside of his direct control it can really be, which is an interesting take, especially given how joyous that hook is, almost a framed as a tentative dare to anyone who’d take his hand. I dunno, this is one I debated greatly whether I could include… but there’s an emotive reality here that’s resonated with me since the very beginning of the year - I had to respect it.
The other Hozier song on this list, and arguably a little more straightforward in its love, so much so that he’s willing to make the Icarus reference and fly straight towards that purifying sun. This is also the second song on the list that utilizes that harsh blaze as delivering as much pain as pleasure, but where for fka twigs it felt biblical in its crushing weight, there’s something primal in the gospel-accented organ swell that Hozier delivers, blending the liquid guitars into the huge soulful groove, especially when the electric roar accents precisely the right notes driving the hook! Again, this is where I could use the ‘horny on main’ qualifier with this song, but there’s a lack of self-consciousness to the purity of his quest, and the bombast to stick the landing in spades! Solar power indeed…
So there’s a lot of revealing character portraits on this album where the level framing forces you to question your empathy… and man, Ian Noe knocked it out of the damn park here with his opening track. To put it bluntly, Irene is a fucking mess, who is swaggering through life with sneering projection and enough alcohol to deflect from the yawning depression within, which she’s extremely candid about… which happens when you have nothing left to lose. But I love how the family dynamic is emphasized on the second verse, where her aghast parents try to probe into what might be happening… and she responds with disgust, because if they had cared properly this might have been averted, and she’s got no time for their judgement now. But for as bleak as this can be, it’s not framed like that: while Dave Cobb’s production does center Ian Noe’s magnetism, there’s some ramshackle warmth to the vintage pickups that dares you to judge Irene too… or maybe even admire her, who knows.
At this point I could go on yet another rant that Marianas Trench getting snubbed from greater presence with accessible pop material is infuriating, but I could imagine getting a song like ‘Only The Lonely Survive’ to radio might be tough - the huge galloping groove and even bigger hook off the glistening touches of guitar, Josh Ramsay remaining one of the most strident vocalists in the genre, and lyrics that draw the first hint that a return to that long-departed ex still has some allure, even despite the utter disaster he knows it would be. But again, is that consuming fire better than loneliness, and is he desperate enough not to care either way? It’s a painful and complex question, and the fact the album explores it in such detail is a credit to a phenomenal song kicking it all off.
It’s a similar buoyant, propulsive groove, but the desperate optimism becomes more straightforward this time around with Sigrid, who intended this song for her fans in probably the most blatant admission of the feedback relationship between artist and fandom since ‘Larger Than Life’ by the Backstreet Boys! But Sigrid leans into the human details that might paint in broad, primary colours, but off that rush of strings and thrumming bass and steady clatter of percussion, not only is the momentum impeccable, the melodic motifs are mirrored and echoed to tremendous size for the sort of festival-filling opening song that’ll serve her well for years to come. No joke, I remember being impressed simply at a distance to hear Sigrid at Reading Festival back in 2018, and if she pushed this live as her lead… yeah, the every girl pop star got her anthem.
Look, I’m not sure how much I can really say about this… outside of the fact that Homeboy Sandman wrote one of the funniest songs I heard all year that’s insanely quotable, remarkably candid, about as progressive as you can get, and all against a warm bass solo and what sounds like vintage porn! It is a ridiculous song and one that doesn’t really fit completely on the album, but it’s simply too much raw fun to deny. The fact it hasn’t been memed yet is a goddamn crime, people, get on this!
…yeah, I know. No, I don’t care that a lot of people hated this song, I’d argue a lot of people never understood this song within the context of the album, an extended long-form narrative surrounding Chance’s marriage and the myriad questions that come at that point of his life. And the title track of The Big Day is the flashpoint, where all the hopes and churning insecurity and raw nerves bounce off each other in a mix that’s just fragmented and alien enough to capture it, from the padded keys to the remarkably warm acoustics that lean into Chance’s unrefined vocals which I’ve always liked, to how the mix switches against blurry warps that reflect an unknown even as the song bends across key changes, to how Francis & The Lights drops into a manic shouted breakdown that’s been compared to MC Ride, but never feels right because it’s got all the exuberance but none of the nihilism. And it works because in the cathartic release of recognizing the miracle of this connection… why wouldn’t he cut loose and celebrate on his big day?
Well, this feels weird: Bring Me The Horizon puts out their most uneven pop-leaning project to date, and I wind up really liking one of the most flagrant pop songs on it! And honestly, if it wasn’t for the outro that does run long and doesn’t quite feel connected, this would be even higher on the list - the crushing impact of the synth-horns on the trap drop, the ominous crescendos that make it the second time a kid’s choir was used on a song on this list and actually worked to ramp up the melodrama, and Oli Sykes being pretty damn convincing roaring his defiance back at the haters. And by the time you flip to the bridge in which everything goes to eleven, the anthemic side of Bring Me The Horizon basically kicks into high gear and the sheer rage at what could be his own audience hits hard… granted, they responded in turn when it came to sales, but we did get this along the way? I’m okay with that.
It’s the most bare, stripped back, lonely song on Traveling Mercies, and for good reason, telling the story of a woman who flees an abusive relationship having stayed too long and having nothing left to lose when the violence is to escalate. And it’s a goddamn harrowing song, both in the gaslighting and genuine human damage evident in both partners, all shattered dreams and misspent expectations where she barely even notices the symbolism tied to the moments in which she leaves… all she needs to do is run, and that’s what she does. And a song like this relies on spare performance so much that all the focus must be on Robinson… and in capturing the broken fragility assembled into just enough hazy fear and real heartbreak, she kills it. Hard song to handle, but stunning all the same.
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This is on Bon Iver’s best song in years - not hard, because there hasn’t been a lot of Bon Iver music in the 2010s despite indie ubiquity, and a lot of it hasn’t been good, but this is something special, mostly because there’s some sense of self-awareness and realization of the passage of time. More importantly, if there’s a call to snapping Justin Vernon out of petulant waffling, it’s this one: you want to drive change, you want inspiration, you want to break your hypocrisy against dreamy swells of guitars, the spare glassy clinks, but real organic foundation in strings and horns that pull off a real crescendo to say something real… well, he delivered it. Hey, even the goddamn Grammys acknowledged this was a fantastic song, and for once, I’ll wholeheartedly agree.
I love this cut for a lot of the same reasons I love ‘Goodmorning Sunshine’ from Little Brother, but Homeboy Sandman is a little less directly aspirational and more blunt and candid in describing his relationship in frankly amazing detail. And what I love about the song is how lived-in it feels - there’s a sense of reality to every line and the playful banter that follows the hooks show an ease of communication that underscores the framing of the entire album. Couple it with those sampled whoops, a great bassline, and a soulful flair that could feel a little broad… except Homeboy Sandman’s honest but relatively low-key delivery grounds the song with real sincerity and dare I say a bit of romance - I mean, a song that can conversationally reference anal sex like this one, that’s got to be love and something real…
Well, this is a tonal shift… and look, anyone who knows indie country has already heard and praised this song time and time again, and there are some calling this the best country song of the year, period. But again, it’s not an easy song: Emily Scott Robinson sings from the perspective of a victim of date rape looking at the outfit she wore that night and is now questioning everything she did with the heartbreaking feeling that on some level it’s her fault. And it’s not and deep down she knows that too… but when you have a society that repeats every question and moment of self-doubt she has now, it makes her quivering voice all the more pain-wracked and heartbreaking. It’s the sort of song that pulls no punches and won’t ask for empathy - the narrator doesn’t think she deserves it - but against a spare acoustic backdrop and an uncomfortably intimate focus on that detail, it comes forth all the same. An utterly devastating song, and while we’re in this territory…
I can make the argument this is billy woods’ best song - and yes, there’s a lot of critics who have made it already to the point where longtime billy woods fans call it easy or conventional, but it’s a moment where woods’ storytelling rips away any pretense at abstraction to just show how illusory any hint of control he might have really is, from personal appetites to broken prejudicial systems to his own angst within fractured artifice, all amidst the textured, crackling world that woods is so deft in painting. Kenny Segal’s lo-fi bass balanced against the bare, muffled but slippery tones and MOTHERMARY’s distant voice amidst the synth-laiden switch-up. But what truly cuts about this song is that billy woods does not spare himself - he’ll highlight those who attempt to deceive themselves into having more control or power or clout, but in the face of cold, hard truth, he finds himself as the kid with no money in the dingy arcade, fucking with the joystick and pretending that he was really playing. If that’s not one of the most cutting lines in rap music this year, I don’t know what is.
So Tegan and Sara could have had a few songs make this list from their catchy as sin slice of retro-2000s pop rock released this year, but this is the cut that hits the most strongly, both in terms of its melodic intricacy from acoustic touches to the simmering bass groove to one monster of a synth-driven hook. And sure, outside of that it’s a pretty straightforward breakup song… but the devil’s in the details, the frustrated angst in giving so much and finding no appreciation, and even if there’s still real feelings you have to end this because the emotional labour is just too much. And when Tegan and Sara delivered that with huge vocal harmonies to boot… yeah, given my year, I needed an anthemic and righteous cut like this.
God, this one snuck up on me, another slice of dream country where we might just get one of the most tragic and painful moments of yearning romance I’ve heard all year. Because on the surface it might seem kind of sweet - she’s just looking for that extra bit of liquid courage to confess her feelings, make it real… but there’s a quiet desperation to how this song is hoping for affection that just gets me every damn time, mostly driven by the production and melodies, which have the burnished intimate warmth and supple bass presence, but the tones are more melancholic and sad, which makes you wonder why she has to wait for that added bit of heady courage, leading to subtext that contains volumes of deeper pain. Again, this a song that could play for romance but reveals a deeper humanity within… which for me this year… yeah.
Okay, let’s bring the mood up a little bit with Marianas Trench delivering the sort of grand finale track for which they’re becoming known and this is one of their best. The huge walls of strings, the interweaving layers of melodic motifs both from Phantoms and Astoria, tying the two projects together in a moment of unexpected climax that’s damn near unparalleled, and Josh Ramsay delivering the vocal performance of his career to seal the the melodramatic madness of his story… it’s a titan of a song that’s pure Marianas Trench, damn the radio or any playlist! Hell, the only reason it’s not higher is… well, the emotive core of this song only really comes through if you’ve heard and love Astoria, and anchoring so much of the climax on that familiarity is a shortcut I can’t help but call out, but again, in the annals of modern pop rock, there are so few who can even approach this height, and it’s something special.
This was not the Ian Noe song I expected to be this high on my list, mostly because while it’s absolutely a scuzzed-out bloodbath for which he’s known and shows that Dave Cobb seems to finally be getting better at producing a bass groove, this is not pure outlaw violence so much as there’s a real romantic core here. Call it cliche that our outlaw has an unmailed letter for his girl promising that his stolen fortune would lead to their success, now caught by police who are going to torture him to death for the location of that gold, but there’s such a focus on grisly detail and storytelling that’s so evocative and striking it demands attention! Again, that desperate emotive core rises to the forefront, and when it’s painted with this much bloody reality… it became my favourite Ian Noe song in 2019, and that’s high praise indeed.
And speaking of murder, we now have Aesop Rock taking a similar brand of overwritten but very human detail to discussing the Ricky Casso murder. And again, that’s where that humanistic framing slides to the forefront of Aes’ fascination: grubby kids in the 80s exploring underground music and satanism with entirely too much drugs - hey, if you know you know - and him being smart enough to show both the relative banality of the situation but also how it could have meant more and was never fully explored. And the production from TOBACCO does a lot of heavy lifting here too - pulsating gurgles, slightly offkilter drums for the final hook, but a melodic swell that seems rooted in the weirder side of 80s synthpop and it accentuates and amplifies that vibe yanked straight from the Satanic panic of the time. And as someone who has always lurked around the edges of that scene… yeah, even despite its bloody twists, this just ruled.
So I went back and checked: Carly Rae Jepsen has never made a year-end list of mine before this song - which seems kind of nuts given that ‘Run Away With Me’ has become a synthpop classic of this decade and deservingly so. But ‘The Sound’ is something else, the sleeper ht of Dedicated that I certainly didn’t expect would grow on me the way it did, all about the gentle exasperation that comes with wanting someone to commit to more off that faded cascade of piano and spare bassy touch around the beat. And when you pay attention to the melodic intricacy and impeccable cadence of her delivery that just so perfect nails the balance between polish and genuine emotion, especially by the time that bridge comes with a moment so damn infectious in its own right… yeah, she knocked it out the park this time, and while it’s not the first time a song called ‘The Sound’ has made a year-end list of mine, this is certainly the better one.
I’m still kind of perplexed how this works at all - or I’m not sure it even does but still feels so damn magnetic and hypnotic to me all the same. Maybe it’s the paranoia that has James Blake constantly questioning why things have never quite clicked the way they should, or the muffled but jittery piano and tangles around the bassline before the padded drumline ominously stalks in as the mix begins fracturing and sputtering apart… and then Andre 3000 shows up with a verse that seems just as dense and questioning, reflecting the curdled pessimism that warps the entire song. But what’s strange is how he basically comes in emphasizing the heady work in building his verse… and then proceeds to sound effortless, all the service of frustration. That’s the tricky thing with James Blake here, how even when he chops everything to ribbons, there’s just sustained tension… and the fact that he made the song so layered and still compelling throughout all of it without ever paying it off… that’s a marvel, especially as I find myself asking the titular question and not really needing the answer.
This, on the other hand, is all glorious payoff because Avantasia makes epic-sounding power metal and this is the best example they had this year. And while the easy way to summarize all of this would be to point at the bridge and say, ‘all of that’, between a solid guitar solo, a lot of well-balanced rollicking groove, a fantastic hook, and even lyrics accentuating how sometimes the larger world just isn’t ready for that higher vision and it’s not a bad thing you had it - maybe just a new path is required as you as you let the past go up in smoke that still has an allure, but a new path is required. But again, when you have a bridge that compositionally recalls the best of Jim Steinman, you’re getting on this list, damn near without question!
If there’s a surprise entry to this list that sparks more bewilderment than anger, it’s going to be this song, because nobody really talked about that Sara Bareilles album this year and yet this blew apart all of my expectations. I’ve long held the belief her material works best when she can balance righteous frustration with emotive pathos, which is one reason why ‘Love Song’ and ‘King Of Anything’ are great, well-balanced pop songs… but ‘Poetry By Dead Men’ leans into her theatricality in its retrospective look at someone who would not commit and now she has to move on for her own sake… but goddamn it, she’s going to accentuate what was left behind, and the grounded reality of her pain. Pair it with the glistening keys and the shuddering rushes of deeper strings off the deeper percussion that still pull off a pretty impressive crescendo in their own right… I’m on the cusp of saying this might be her best song to date, and deserves so much more attention!
And on the topic of relationships fracturing because of failures to communicate - don’t look at me like that, this year was messy, you think you know me, but do you really - we have a cut from Of Monsters And Men that I’d argue was basically overlooked in comparison with the huge pop rock moments that defined FEVER DREAM. And that’s a kind of a shame because there’s a lot of poignancy and real beauty to a cut like this, where our frontman is trying to convey the heavier angst and depression that that’s been lying beneath the surface for so long where he genuinely needs help… and the acknowledgement that his partner wants to help but she’s only getting pieces of the picture, which is frustrating especially when the magnetism between them is still as strong as it’s always been. And the pop focus works off the fluttery keys, spikes of guitar, more propulsive drums, and a melodically developed hook that frankly hits as well as they ever have: Of Monsters And Men were always a band that garnered their greatest firepower leaning into melody, and despite being one of their simplest, it’s one of their best… or hey, just one that got to me at the right time.
Look, Frank Turner’s No Man’s Land is a flawed album in a lot of ways which I described at length this year… but as a tribute to feminine liberation and specifically Huda Sha’awari, who was responsible for galvanizing the feminist movement in the Arab world, ‘The Lioness’ kicks ass and Frank Turner delivers a wallop of a song with one of his most explosive and anthemic hooks in years. The roaring guitars, the brittle bass foundation that picks up impact as the song ratchets up the energy, and a solo that kicks in at precisely the right moment. It’s arguably one of the closest things to a straightforward kickass anthem Frank Turner has put out in years that actually works for me, and with that… yeah, I can feel the movement here.
Man, apparently the secondary theme of this list is tonal whiplash, because here we have one of BROCKHAMPTON’s most bleak singles to date… and it might just be their best, or at least one that fully hit for me in a way that they’ve only found piecemeal before. The lethargic but fractured guitar loops, the haunted hook with Deb Never, how ever verse carries its own distinctive angst from Matt’s abandonment post-breakup told with stark detail, the different veins of restraint in Merlyn and Dom’s depression, and then Joba and bearface come in to hit the moments of mid-song breakdown that feel incredibly raw even despite of - or maybe because of - the muted delivery. It’s a song about searching for… something, but knowing that when you inevitably succumb to your demons you can’t be helped in the same way, and there’s a rawness to that pain you can't quite escape. Again, for me at least this year, this might be their best song to date.
And on the topic of songs in the throes of mid-collapse, here’s the more bombastic, melodramatic side of it from Josh Ramsay second guessing all of his own instincts as he stumbles towards what could very well be madness in the face of the lost love he’s been trying to escape for an album and a half now! And yes, it’s not as ‘real’ as a song like ‘NO HALO’, but Marianas Trench leans into the unreality of it all to ramp the strings-accented bombast and creeping dread to eleven and then keep going, especially into the switch-up for the final crescendo where Roger Joseph Manning Jr. serves as the little voice spurring Ramsey even deeper towards that yawning pit of emotions he’s buried but never completely processed, emblematic of how you don’t quite bury that sort of past trauma in the same way. Couple it with probably being some of the best Edgar Allen Poe themed music since Nightwish a dozen years ago, and Marianas Trench have another tour de force under their belt - well deserved.
Yeah, this is my favourite rap song of 2019, where if SHREDDERS laid the groundwork for their targets on ‘Vanilla ISIS’, this is the larger broadside. Glassy clinks off the spare groove that before the clanking bombast roars to the forefront, it’s the sort of banger production for which we always expect from the Doomtree crew, but Sims and P.O.S. let off a battering ram of assertions that blow into uncomfortable territory and don’t stop. Failures of capitalism, a machine that’s spat both of them out as they refocus on the art that can move the spirit, and in their world falling apart, P.O.S admitting frankly that if it hits them honestly, he wouldn’t even be that mad - he’s ready. And Sims is ready to follow - knowing just how bleak this road can go once they’ve got their people behind them, we get one of the most iconic lines of the year: ‘it goes classes to ashes / this machine kills fascists’. The song is framed as a war cry and has the teeth to back it up, framing the message once etched onto Woody Guthrie’s guitar into the modern age - and fucking hell, I was ready for it. Kickass.
Now this was the Frank Turner song that really clicked for me this year… and yet it’s one that actually the problem I had with his album in that he’s speaking from the female POV without really a need to, especially given the relative anonymity of the scene of an unnamed prostitute who died in ancient times in the town that would become London, England. But there’s two factors that work to this song’s favour, the first being the consistent romanticism in its sweep in the undying love that outlasted the corrupt priests and those who would have condemned or exploited them; that sort of legacy living across time has a lot of power, especially when you pair it with the slow-burning crescendo that hits its apex on Christmas morning and winds up reminding me of similar climaxes from Love, Ire & Song. It’s amazingly well-paced, the melodic changeups earn the dramatic swell, and Frank Turner delivers in spades. It’s one of his best songs in years, and if it wasn’t for issues of framing it could have well been my song of this year… so what beat it?
And following our themes of high romanticism in rather dire circumstances, we have one of the best songs PUP has ever released, where amidst the wallow of nihilism and aimless rage where he had run himself ragged to the edge… he meets the one person who’s just as jaded and bitter about everything as he is and it’s an unbelievable rush. It reminds me of the powerful and very human catharsis that works in the best moments of You’re The Worst, because it’s pretty good to feel something and PUP is going to ramp the huge hooks to eleven and shove two of their best into the song right after each other. The guitars have huge pop punk crunch, Stefan Babcock is howling his lungs out with snotty rage, and the melodies remain as sticky as ever even as he cusses himself out for getting way too literal… but hey, that’s what love will do for you - it really is that good to feel something, you know.
I remember the first time I heard ‘Shade Of The Pines’ and I remembered thinking this couldn’t possibly be from some no-name band I discovered on Bandcamp barely known within their home country, let alone where I was at! But if I’m talking about one of the best crescendos of the year, off of echoing acoustic fragments that would cycle and build off the propulsive swell with aching strings and yearning that questions its own existence because there’s no way he can be saved… but the hope lingers anyway. It’s a song that questions whether love is even possible… and then lets himself believe just enough. Precisely placed vocal harmonies, stunning falsetto, beautiful melodies that makes your soul want to soar - again, this was very nearly my song of the year, and the fact it lasted this high on the list from nearly the beginning of 2019 is a testament to its power - because SUNDAYS are the real goddamn deal, and you need to get onboard yesterday!
But on the topic of SUNDAYS, I’ve already placed ‘Avalanche’ on this list, but if I was looking for a song that got away from willowy yearning and into something more raw while keeping the melodic focus and themes of the song… yeah, Sigrid delivered it with ‘Dynamite’. And what hurts about the song is that it’s all about trying to balance the grand scope of your emotions and longing for another with the reality of work and art and passion, all against bare bones piano because goddamn it if Sigrid is not going to make you feel all of that pathos with every step of the way, especially with the reality just out of frame that least right now, it probably won’t work. There’s a maturity to this drama that frankly for which Sigrid has not gotten enough credit, because man alive, an imbalance of passions and a question of being able to do both when sometimes it’s not going to work… yeah, this was another one that picked up some unique resonance for me in 2019, but with the talent Sigrid brings to the table, it’s well-deserved all the same.
The audacity of a song like this is kind of unmatched. Taking the original structure of the ‘Highwaymen’ song and stripping out the dated production for a greater sense of atmosphere and flipping the stories to be explicitly feminine and considerably heavier by doing so, The Highwomen carve a legacy that’s not just better than the classic they interpolated, but one that justifies the group purely with its existence! Seriously, even if this had been their only song it would be enough, from Brandi Carlisle centering the immigrant story, Amanda Shires highlighting the misunderstood, sexually-open witch, Yola stepping up to place the black women in the civil rights movement on their pedestal, and Natalie Hemby showing how even pure faith and altruism led to her death, with the reincarnation narrative echoing all the more sharply because how far none of it is from now. An legacy oft untold, now reclaimed, and daring the challenge from those who can’t bear to see the full scope of history behind them. In other words, the best country song of 2019… so what’s better?
Of all the songs on this list, this is the one that I find hardest to talk about… because Jetty Bones made her version of ‘Till It Happens To You’ with all of the gaslighting and self-doubt of ‘The Dress’ but painted in more visceral tones because now there’s family and friends and social norms to which none of this makes sense and she needs to find a way to reconcile real trauma, delivered with a pop rock/emo framing and sound you could have heard fifteen years ago on the radio, which when juxtaposed with the subject matter cuts all the deeper. There’s no punches pulled, no relief, just the sort of brutal reality that doesn’t make sense with this delivery and yet feels all the more real because of it… the definition of too real. And for me… it wasn’t far removed from Oliver Thorn’s video on how men deal with abuse or trauma, even sung from a different perspective, and in 2019, I needed a song like this, especially given how the arc of healing came forth from it. Really fucking heavy stuff, I have to say… or to put it a different way…
If the last track was too real at the darkest point, this is the blazing sunlight that doesn’t deny the darkness but leans into a hyperlocalized expression of how to cope with it, full of black humour and righteous fury that PUP made their own in 2019. And I don’t know if it’s just that the Toronto-specific reference points are so unmistakably real that they clicked so deeply, or the boredom that drags your mind into dark places and makes you question everything when you drag yourself out on the other side, or how he looks at the other person and asks what the hell he can even do: they had everything, they pissed it away, and while there might still be some flicker of affection, there’s no words left. And while he holds himself to account for as much as everything spiraled out of control - and time makes idiots of everyone, especially as he’s not sure where he’ll ultimately land - when there’s so many crashing hooks and huge sing-a-long moments that translate both on the record and live, making even a festival stage make you think they’re just playing at Sneaky Dee’s again… there’s not a lot of music that can so thoroughly recapture its time and place regardless of setting while feeling resonant anywhere, and that’s why ‘Morbid Stuff’ by PUP is the best song of 2019. One more list left, folks - see y’all on the other side.