the top ten best hit songs of 2021

There was some deliberation on the very concept of hits when I was putting together my worst of 2021 - I did not need to have that for the best hits of this year.

And as someone who’s been doing this coming up on a decade, that’s such a relief to feel - I know some have said 2021 is a step back in comparison with the last year, but at least to me it felt more reminiscent of 2013, with greater polarization between the best and worst: the bad songs might have been more terrible than last year, but the great songs are still here and there’s even more of them, and that’s not even counting the songs like ‘Mood’ and ‘Blinding Lights’ that wound up enormous hits extending into 2021!

Even when you start breaking it down to individual genres, there’s a startling amount of quality across the board. R&B in particular had a great year, especially when it brushed against pop and rap and trap, one of the two signposts that indicated the 2000s revival was surging in, along with the welcome pop punk resurgence. Some were coming from older acts trying new things, some from established hitmakers holding their stride off of later singles that wound up surprisingly strong, and we got newcomers who saw a commercial breakthrough that both surprised and satisfied. Even country, for as many awful songs as there were still managed to push enough legit quality to get on this list as well. It’s also a reason why embarrassment was an overriding emotion when talking about the worst hits of 2021 - because a fair chunk of acts on that list also have hits here that show exactly how much better they could be! And that’s probably what pulled me back to considering this list, beyond the fact that it’s easily the most fun to put together every year: the whole concept of a hit might have been strained until it broke, but even a bad definition can scoop up enough quality every once and a while.

And hell, even though I’m only considering songs that debuted on the year-end Hot 100 in 2021, I still had a wealth of songs to pick from and had to make some really tough cuts, so let’s start with our Honourable Mentions!

I’m kind of shocked this song did as well as it did - a cut from 2019 that thanks to Music Row’s lousy slow-build promotion only became a country sleeper hit in 2021 when she released her first project on BBR. And it’s not a song that arrives with a bang, but it does stick out - Lainey Wilson’s drawl has a slightly rougher edge against the acoustic melody, twinkling melody, and remarkably solid groove courtesy of that kickdrum and bass, all of which is given ample space in a mix for her wistful exasperation to materialize well. And I like how she frames the sentiment - not only can she do everything these guys can and be on her own, but also holding to a higher standard when it comes to what she wants out of a relationship, which shouldn’t be too much to ask, and I like that the negative space highlights how lonely that can be. Kind of a shame she’s signed to BBR under Jason Aldean, but if it’s enough to get her in the door with old but good songs, I’ll take it.

Yeah, if 2021 proved anything, it’s that Playboi Carti’s formula works way more for me when women do it, and because Coi Leray was able to play to a breezy kissoff with the same staccato jumpiness off the sweet pianos and pretty decent production, she saw the brunt of entirely too much backlash for a lot of stupid reasons, most of which were bullshit. You can’t throw out the nepotism card - which isn’t even all that applicable given how she references her tension with Benzino in the first verse - and then give a pass to Kid LAROI, especially when Coi Leray’s got a gentle playfulness that’s surprisingly likable as she chases a comeup. Also the remix credited on the charts contains a Lil Durk verse - I’m fine with this, it fits the aspirational vibe, Durk doesn’t overpower her and lets her have the last word, it’s a really damn fine moment. But speaking of artists who get entirely too much flack…

I’ll freely admit I have a soft spot for Ava Max, who is clearly trying way too hard to be a conventional pop star but with increasingly limited resources and talent at her disposal - yes, even with Cirkut and RedOne behind her here. But that’s kind of her charm - her best songs are all overstylized overreaches where the production is obviously straining off its goofy Bonnie Tyler interpolation, her pop feminism is basic but sold with populism the sort of full-throated gusto that you find yourself rooting for it regardless, it’s not that far removed from the electro-pop she idolizes and her throatier alto does give a song like this real foundation. She’s probably the most convincing underdog on the Hot 100 right now, and I’d rather root for a good song that’s trying to be epic than someone resting on their laurels and getting a hit by connections and birthright. So yeah, Ava Max is making my list again as a b-list wannabe I like more than most - deal with it.

At the same time, I can respect when the coronation feels earned and delivers a smackdown, and while songs like this have a steeper uphill climb to win me over, ‘INDUSTRY BABY’ eventually did. The horns backing the hammering percussion courtesy of Take A Daytrip and Kanye West - can he just go back to being a producer now - letting Lil Nas X deliver the sort of explosive, in your face climax that highlights a pop star claiming his title while being out, proud, and not afraid to embrace the theatricality in the face of everyone that would hate it. But I’ll freely admit it was Jack Harlow was the factor that pulled me fully onboard - I’ve liked this guy since the original ‘WHATS POPPIN’ for having a high floor in terms of technical competency and dry wit, but this is on a different level: I might think the jabs at social media are tired, but there’s something sly and righteous in how Harlow plays not just into his increased popularity, but also in ways that are going to piss off all of his haters anyway, down to claiming that he’s getting cuter and that clap after sending the girl back. It walks the line between silliness and righteousness impeccably, and if both of these guys are planning to stick around, that’s a net positive.

…I’m legit shocked this made the year-end list. I thought it was just short - and personally I would have preferred ‘Street Runner’ as the radio breakthrough - but if Rod Wave is going to deliver a gospel inflected note of trap/R&B melancholy, I’m going to stick up for it. The mixing is a little more refined off the spare acoustics and vocal sample - the bass isn’t swamping everything out for once - and I love how the choral vocals swell on the hook and outro, but Rod Wave’s pensive paranoia at the face of a world getting rougher and more complicated that will likely see his early end feels earned, both from a relationship he can’t satisfy and his father’s warnings about the feds. This would be higher if there was a bit more meat to the song - Rod Wave has a problem putting out fragments I’ve talked about several times - but when the fragment is this good, it’s making the list.

I’m going to say this about positions the album: it deserved a smarter promo run than it got. Yeah, it got released at perhaps the worst possible time last year and it didn’t quite have the obvious singles, but the title track was really good, ‘34+35’ did what it needed to, especially with the remix, and if her team had bothered to push ‘nasty’ or ‘off the table’ with The Weeknd, this would be a different conversation! But people still seemed to sleep on ‘pov’, which might be one of my favourite deep cuts on the album - yeah, the mixing is not quite as good as it should be, but the strings are once again gorgeous, Ariana Grande finally knows how to play into the understated, fizzly groove before the song opens up for her to belt, and I really like the content, where she wants to love herself as much as her partner does, where she could put her baggage and damage aside and be the best version of herself. It has a note of maturity that I really appreciated from Ariana, and even like sweetener the fans are going to sleep on positions and this song, I reckon this is a point of view worth hearing.

I’m still a little stunned this caught on, but I’m thrilled it did: SZA teams up with Jacob Collier for a cycling, meditative acoustic R&B song and winds up with one of the best songs of both of their careers. Seriously, this was so blissful at precisely the right time across January in 2021: the cyclical guitars are so warm off the spare, earthy percussion, the song felt saturated and meditative as SZA sinks into the world, and while I’m tempted to make a bimboification reference to SZA being on her ‘empty mind shit’, there’s an exasperated but quiet optimism I really like about SZA putting behind her old frustrations for something new in the future as she lets go of things she doesn’t need. It’s where new age meets some really well chosen Biblical reference points on the second verse that legit made me smile - there’s layers to the vibes here beyond the compositional complexity that I really hope SZA explores on that next album… providing we get it in the future. God, we can dream, right?

Alright, that was straightforward enough - now onto our top ten, starting off with…

10. You know, speaking of questionable promotion, this was a single that I’m pleased became a hit, but still winds up irritating me because there was so much more that could have been smashes if its project had been marketed properly… or if the fan club only EP had pushed some singles more aggressively. Maybe it might have convinced more folks that not only is Eric Church still around, he still kicks a lot of ass!

There’s a lot of things I find amusing about ‘Hell of a View’, the most prominent being that it’s essentially an update to his biggest charting hit ‘Springsteen’ from nearly a decade ago, and not just in the obvious worship of the titular figure. It’s playing to hard living, road warrior vibes, with that added bit of detail and texture that makes Church songs actually stand out from the crowd, but where ‘Springsteen’ was all about the references and memories, this is lived in and now - someone bought in to travel with him, and while it’s decidedly not for everyone, they’re going to chase the wonder and dreams along the road all the way, the sort of romanticism that feels more explosive than your average boyfriend song, but also more real as a result. Also for once Jay Joyce’s production lets the guitars build to a potent hook without feeling blocky or oversold, especially off the piano and the soulful backing vocals from Joanna Cotten, especially when the bridge picks up some of that misty, synth-inflected swell that shows all of that 80s Americana worship surge to the forefront. But that makes sense - Eric Church is a music nerd and has always been trying to spin old dreams into a new legacy, which for me only adds to the charm. Terrific song, and while it’s not better than the best of the & EP, at some point he’ll give that wider release and we’ll get the real smashes.

9. …you know, it’s really nice when one of the biggest songs of the year also happens to be one of the best of them. And while there’s been a rollercoaster to get here, Dua Lipa knocked another one out of the park.

I’ll admit ‘Levitating’ didn’t immediately grip me - I was way more invested in ‘Love Again’, which was the late album single I thought should have been way bigger, and in some countries it absolutely was. But ‘Levitating’ became a radio behemoth with multiple peaks, and it’s easy to see why: the disco groove is colourful off the fat bass without going pure retro, the guitars splash off the arranged elements with a ton of swagger, even the pseudo-trap breakdown didn’t bother me as Dua Lipa’s voice ebbs and slides across the mix. And yeah, all the space references are goofy as hell, but that’s always been a flavour oft-ignored in that era of the 70s that’s a nice touch on the track here! Now it’s worth noting that this song is only credited to Dua Lipa… but that was not really the version that blew up in 2021 and got broader crossover, even if it was never enough to push this properly to #1, and that means it’s worth talking about DaBaby. I’ll keep this brief - while I get the trepidation pulling his name from the song and attempting to rewrite history in the wake of his self-inflicted career missteps and implosion, if I’m left comparing both versions, it’s a bit of a lateral move; DaBaby proves that he could have been a Ludacris-esque guest feature on pop songs where he doesn’t drag them down but also doesn’t quite elevate them either, and it’s a shame he mismanaged his career so badly that what could have sat along ‘ROCKSTAR’ as one of his biggest and best hits has his name scratched off. Still, if all we’ve got is the original, it’s a legit pop smash that probably deserved to hit the top, but should have the staying power to stick around regardless. And while I’m several years removed from being early to Dua Lipa, I’m thrilled she’s hit her stride

8. I remember being so surprised when this became a monster hit from seemingly out of nowhere. I’ll fully admit I didn’t see the hype materializing the way it did, to say nothing of the phenomenon that would become her 2021, and I’ll freely admit this took a while to grow on me. But about a year later… yeah, what a way to put it in gear.

The waves of hype and acclaim around Olivia Rodrigo have been a little odd to observe from a distance, especially with critics going head over heels for SOUR which is a good album, but also weirdly produced, underpowered, and a little one-dimensional, especially given her obvious influences and polished theatricality. And to some extent, all of that is true with ‘driver’s license’, but it’s one of the rare pop songs where you can tell there was enough of something real to anchor enough of a great performance and really solid writing. I appreciate how well it uses negative space and the sound effects of a car, even just the synth dying off across the verses as it builds on the hook, I appreciate how there’s actually a bit of a driving tempo behind it, I like how it feels specific in its targets and even if it’s all just manufactured drama, Rodrigo is just good enough to convince you there were still real feelings involved. And even if the bridge is an obvious Taylor Swift homage with its backing vocals layered the way they were, there’s a part of me that can’t help but feel it when she screams out that she still fucking loves him, the crack in the performance that feels real, and a sign that Olivia Rodrigo has a better grasp on placing profanity than most, especially as a Disney starlet. But in the end, this is a song that I think is getting a little overlooked in comparison with what would follow, but it opened up the garage door… and took us all off into the sunset.

7. So one thing I try to pay attention to with regards to year-end lists is the general climate around a specific song - not critical acclaim, as that can be kind of a crapshoot, but where the conversation is going. And off of that alone, I know I’ve got at least three songs in the top ten proper that haven’t been getting the best of looks. But hell, I’ve already put Coi Leray and Ava Max on this list, I’ve never had whatever passes for ‘good taste’ as much of a societal construct as that is, and speaking of women who are eating well this year…

This is the song I’ve been looking for Megan Thee Stallion to make since she broke through, easily her best solo joint since the Tina Snow era and showcasing both the hunger and the technical refinement that highlights exactly how sharp Megan can be when she locks in. On the surface, this is what you’d expect from Megan Thee Stallion, a kissoff to haters where she can still twerk aggressively and flaunt her success while still being funny and nasty, but there’s a different energy to ‘Thot Shit’ than even a song like ‘WAP’ which played more naturally to comedy. Maybe it’s the ghostly samples behind the synth bass, scratches, and clanking trap percussion that builds into that sense of menace, maybe it’s how much she varies her flows and can handle the double-time and she’s not dropping the rhyme scheme, maybe it’s how many punchlines she rams through where the brand names are here but they’re not the focus, or maybe it’s the frankly insane video that hits that narrow line of horror, humour, and batshit. It all contributes to a sense of creeping menace that reminds me of Nicki at her very best, of which there’s some obvious influence, but Megan is also more flagrant, where it’s less reclamation of ‘thot shit’ and more a dare to keep up. It’s Megan Thee Stallion refined, but still hungry, and once again highlights how she can give any competition male, female, or otherwise a run for their money. Also it slaps - I’m here for it.

6. There are certain songs that make lists like this where I find myself wondering how much anyone will remember or care about them - you know the type, where you can listen to them and recognize immediately that they’re great, but it’s the sort of understated greatness that reflects maturity and subtlety, and while that often stands the test of time, it’s not always remembered. But I dunno, for me in 2021, this has enough to hold me.

It feels like we’ve been on the cusp of that Chris Stapleton breakthrough for years now - that particular wave of indie country hype seems to have come and gone, and while Stapleton has seen chart success and even a feature with Justin Timberlake to make a year-end list on a song I dearly love, this is his first crack with a song of his own. And while this title track is excellent, it’s the sort of excellence that if you know Chris Stapleton you know exactly what to expect. It’s homespun, the arrangement is pretty stripped back and organic with backing vocals from his wife, the production is naturalistic and sounds amazingly warm thanks to producer Dave Cobb finally miccing a bassline properly, and Stapleton doesn’t need to oversing as he plans his steps towards whatever’s next. It plays very similar to Eric Church’s ‘Hell of A View’ conceptually in looking at the hard open road but finding comfort in taking it with a partner, but that’s not quite why I think this caught on at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021, when a whole lot of folks were looking to exhale, look at the world ahead, and maybe use this time as an opportunity to try something new, where a song like this felt like a steady nudge of reassurance that it’ll be okay. Granted, 2021 didn’t really pay off that promise, but that’s the fault of the world, not Chris Stapleton. Anyway, even outside of this year, the song and album it supports are both great, and if ‘You Should Probably Leave’ manages to stick around, we might have just stumbled into the change we wanted.

5. So Megan Thee Stallion is not the only act making both of my lists of hits this year… but in this case, it’s different. She had a misstep but then lived up to her potential in spades, whereas with this song you can argue it’s not even the lead artist’s potential that’s being exposed the most. But we don’t have the version of this song from the man properly behind it - yet - and if I’m going to be honest with myself…

This might be my favourite Justin Bieber song - for as much as you can call it one. Yes, he’s singing it, yes, a lot of the lyrics can be seen as directed as his wife, but read even a little deeper into the liner notes and you realize this is not Justin Bieber’s song. No, this was primarily written and produced by Jon Bellion, which most of you know from ‘All Time Low’ or his breakthrough in 2016, which was messy but still had some incredible moments. And you can tell it’s a Jon Bellion song: it knows how to set up a competent crescendo, the 80s inflected synth textures allow swell to build up behind Bieber and give him the most bombast and support he’s ever had, to where even his falsetto doesn’t sound bad, even down to the gated, Phil Collins-esque drum breakdown going into the final hook! Even if Bieber didn’t lean into the old school sports approach for the music video it would feel like one in its space and texture… and to think that Bellion couldn’t get anyone beforehand to bite on this. It was originally intended for Camila Cabello for Romance back in 2019 - could you have imagined her on this, my god - but it wound up with Bieber and… yeah, sometimes the vacant megastar can land a smash, the moment I’d argue it seemed like popular sentiment swung back in his favour this year. Shame he didn’t do much with it, but at least we have this.

4. ..so remember when I said ‘driver’s license’ might be getting overlooked in the scope of Olivia Rodrigo’s 2021? Yeah, this is why.

Yeah, I’m grateful this got at least one week at #1, because this was a banger for me all summer and even despite my problems, it kept growing on me. Yeah, it feels pissed and lacking in dignity and there are definitely clumsy lyrical moments that lean hard on teenage melodrama - and that’s exactly why it works, the moment where nuance crumbles and you get the ugly, revealing picture of heartbreak lashing out. the sort of deeply-felt catharsis that gives it firepower. Yeah, it’s coming from a Disney starlet - probably why the guitars don’t pick up the firepower they should to back up the groove, where if you grew up in the 2000s you know exactly how much a song like this could explode - but in a sense that kind of works in context; Olivia Rodrigo is not the bad girl that revels in getting even, which is why the song is so flailing and openly hurt and on the bridge openly questioning whether she’s overreacting, and that feels a lot more real to the circumstance. I should also mention that I spent the majority of the year listening to this mashed up with Paramore’s ‘Misery Business’, which had better riffs to back up the groove and allowed me to construct the headcanon of Hayley Williams being the ‘bad girl’ who stole the guy in question and who can blow cracks in Rodrigo’s fake smile, where the morality of the situation is out the window and thank god this exists in a timeline where Glee is no longer on the air! Now I get the audience who’ll think they’re too good for this - they’ll probably prefer ‘Happier Than Ever’ by Billie Eilish, a fine song from a better album that plays in similar territory and could have made this list if the guitars weren’t produced like absolute shit on the second half, but in a year where entirely too many grown-ass adults exposed their lack of maturity with far more destructive consequences, I’m just fine giving a pass to a teenager letting it loose here, especially when it kicks this much ass.

3. But on the topic of pop rock utterly lacking in dignity…

Don’t look at me like that, you all knew this was coming, you had an entire year to prepare for me to place this on my year-end list! And even despite Machine Gun Kelly’s embarrassment of a year - though I want to point fingers at everyone at Bad Boy and Interscope who somehow couldn’t figure out how to make ‘bloody valentine’ and especially ‘forget me too’ with Halsey radio smash hits this summer - this was a total blast and eventually even the parts I didn’t think I liked turned around to work. And while it would be easy to say that Travis Barker is wholly responsible - his integration of live drums and programmed trap touches is probably the most seamless I’ve heard in the industry thus far - I have to give credit to Machine Gun Kelly’s dull-eyed panic at realizing he slept with his ex’s best friend and is catching feelings about it at the worst possible time. But what made the song unlock for me was two details: one comes in the first verse with MGK realizing his boy is hooking up with his ex - so we have a whole Midsummer Night’s Dream vibe here, the most sophisticated reference ever associated with this song - and then there’s blackbear’s verse, where he is just as panicked and yowling his lungs out, but if this is MGK’s id screaming back at his ex who is probably pissed he’s hooking up with her best friend, there’s something to how jagged the clapback feels! Yeah, the song is messy and trashy but in ways that make it interesting, with blackbear actually sounding like he gives a shit and MGK riding a pop punk groove that might not be the best on his album, but still goes off surprisingly well, especially in a workout mix. And look, you don’t have to tell me Machine Gun Kelly is squandering his momentum - back when I praised Tickets to My Downfall I told y’all that was probably going to be just a one time thing - but in the meantime, this was a complication where the fall out was worth the watch.

2. It seems like with both of my lists in 2021, there are obvious picks for my worst and best of the year… and in both cases, they’re coming in at #2. Not to say that in a different year they might not get that spot - hell, I’d put money on this being all over everyone’s best hits of this year, and deservingly so - but time and emotional responses do shift how you engage with things. So while I dearly love this song and the album it came from, I think I’m going to leave it here.

At this point, what is there to even left to say about Silk Sonic, the team-up of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak that immediately made sense when we heard about it and then lived up to nearly everyone’s expectations and more - I didn’t need them to bring back vintage 70s soul, but they do it so damn well! The vocal interplay is incredible, especially with Bruno Mars leaning into his higher register and falsetto, the mix is lush with a terrific bassline, really pretty keyboard line off the guitar rollick and squonk, and even if the drums are a little dry, the playing and how well they’re micced and presented in the mix is just enough foundation and flair to keep the sultry vibe impeccably balanced. And I just love how well Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak understand the vibe - yeah, it’s the sounds of the 70s that are more than a little silly or cheesy with the right context, but there’s a charm to having enough charisma to land the romanticism even past that, even with Anderson .Paak bragging about his warm pool and the filets if she’s hungry, with just enough of a modern flair to his writing style to help it feel like more than a throwback. I’ve also seen the criticism that a song like this - or indeed the album - is a little too faithful to the sounds of that era while not quite having the flaws and texture that gave a lot of 70s soul its character, where you could point at Bruno Mars’ theatricality as a factor, a little too polished. And that’s a fair criticism, but not one I completely agree with, mostly courtesy of Anderson .Paak’s slightly rougher edges and the feeling that this is also kind of a one-time side venture. A legit amazing one of which I’ve been surprised how much replay it’s had for me - normally throwbacks can fade, especially if you’re very familiar with the originals - but this is one done by the best and held its charm the entire year. When I heard this the first time, it set the bar ridiculously high for hits in 2021… so what could beat it?

Well, before we get to that, let me continue the tradition I’m started in earnest last year, to focus on the songs that landed on the Canadian year-end list that were absolutely great, but didn’t quite get the penetration they should have down south; America, you need to fix your shit, so you get can songs like…

The dour, swampy slice of Lithuanian house that nevertheless went way harder than it had any right to, ‘The Business’ by Tiesto

Raising the open question why they don’t just lean into making swaggering dance pop with glassy, razor tight grooves and nailing an impeccable balance between pain and being righteously pissed, ‘Diamonds’ by Sam Smith

The synth-inflected folk sleeper that might be cribbing notes from Bon Iver but reflected a sound I honestly wish he had pursued a little more, ‘Afterglow’ by Ed Sheeran

The darker slice of early 80s pop rock that wasn’t just a collaboration that made all kinds of sense with great production and a killer groove, but also deserved to be the slice of smoldering new wave that soundtracked every nightclub we couldn’t crash, ‘Prisoner’ by Miley Cyrus ft. Dua Lipa

And speaking of Dua Lipa, the best song on Future Nostalgia with a fantastic melodic groove, stacked with hooks and a terrific sample and our pop star playing into exasperation with terrific results, that should have been a hit worldwide, ‘Love Again’ by Dua Lipa

I could also include ‘Easy On Me’ by Adele here as well, but that song is kind of between years and will wind up on next year’s Best Hits of 2022 unless it’s an absolute banner year, you can guarantee that. And yeah, there’s bad songs too - for some reason we gave Shawn Mendes’ multiple hits from that disaster of an album at the end of 2020 - but let’s ignore all of that and look to…

1. I think a lot of folks were looking for 2021 to be a bit of a reset - yeah, a lot of things were still bad, but they could get better, right? Well, what I think made this year really complicated is that for some of us, it may have improved… but not in a way that made us feel better. Or hell, we may have seen tangible improvements, but when you looked both inwards and outwards, it didn’t feel right to rage about the fact that we weren’t satisfied, or for the problems we did encounter. And I’ll freely admit my year in 2021, both on my channel and outside of it… well, it sucked, plain and simple. Not to a point of inducing trauma - go back to 2016 or 2019 if you want a snapshot of that - but it was hard to escape the feeling that even if I did well in certain spaces, it was still hard. And if there was a song that hit that precise emotional resonance, it was this one.

Before 2021,; Polo G was an artist I respected a lot more than I liked - he was a smart, forward-thinking rapper who had good melodic instincts and a clear eye for detail and he had written some songs I thought deserved more traction - ‘Martin & Gina’ should have been a smash hit, goddamnit - but I also thought he had a low ceiling, making a solid amount of good music but rarely great. ‘RAPSTAR’ became his biggest hit this year, and it proved me wrong in spades, a ukulele backed trap song with his best ever hook and percussion that sounds competently mixed for once, never overpowering that lead melodic presence and giving Polo G space to vent. Now Polo G is not unique in being sad or depressed in the face of newfound success, nearly every rapper who blows up makes their ‘more money, more problems’ song, but the roots of what Polo G does with this are very different, not just in how the flexes feel routine but also how the trauma from street level violence hasn’t left his mind at all - especially as he still has a foot in that world - and all fame has gotten him is fewer friends, more drugs, and a pop image that stifles him from truly exposing just how much pain he feels - one of the most cutting moments here comes on the second verse where he’s about to go off but stops himself to be more polite; every time he cuts himself off you can tell there’s so much more he’s just not saying. And even then, the sense of guilt that weighs on him for translating street level trauma and anxiety into his success, where if he talks about his pain and anxiety it feels rehearsed because that’s a part of the rollout plan within the corporatization of emo trap - it’s no wonder he sounds so goddamn lonely trying to filter through an honest picture. He drops a comparison to Tupac on the second verse and it’s one of the rare times it feels earned, not just in terms of melodic flexibility and a great flow and just how young he is, but also how so much of his music was therapeutic for him, where he’s using it to salve wounds and a creeping numbness of anxiety and guilt and exhaustion, where he’s clinging to success as a lifeline, and praying to a God he doesn’t know exists so that fewer kids wind up with burgundy t-shirts. And I appreciate he called it ‘rapstar’ - rock star or pop star lifestyle is escapism, especially nowadays - this is reality. And while I’ll never had the stakes in my life that’ll align with Polo G, which are layered and messy on a scale I’m not sure I can fathom especially at his age, nor I would wish to, the underlying emotional balancing act… that felt real in a powerful way. While this clicked for me early, the resonance only deepened, and it’s the best hit song of 2021. Even if he never tops it, sometimes the star is bright when you need it most.