the top ten best hit songs of 2022
If I thought 2022 was difficult to put in context for the worst hit songs of 2022, the best feels like it’s on a different level of weirdness.
Now some of this is based on the same limited selection of songs that come with the influx of Christmas music and cuts from 2021 taking up space on the year-end Hot 100, but I’d argue it runs further. For one, given the weird cutoff timing, there are songs on this list from late 2021 might seem more appropriate in that year, even if they only notched the list this year. And we can’t ignore the songs that aren’t even from this year becoming hits thanks to newfound virality, and my possibly contentious opinion is that they’re eligible so long as they haven’t made a year-end list before - they always have been, even if it might seem unfair to pit a ‘classic’ against what we have right now.
But what do we have right now? The pop punk resurgence of last year seemed to evaporate, along with a majority of good pop music and any traces of rock, and that’s not even to get into trap and hip-hop, which hit a weird quagmire of album bombs that shredded momentum and songs that should have had more staying power just never crossing over because we needed another Encanto song to gum up the radio! You could argue reggaeton had a good year, but that’s more Bad Bunny having persistent success than anyone else, and we’ll get to him later. Hell, the genre I’d argue that ran the goddamn table in 2022 was country, where I haven’t seen a year this strong mainstream or indie since probably the 90s! A lot of chart nerds tend not to be as aware of that golden era - thanks to the Hot 100 being more of a pop songs chart and crossover country was rarely recognized until later that decade - but if you weren’t paying attention to Nashville, even with my well-known biases in this genre you missed out on a lot!
But as per usual, the songs had to debut on the year-end Hot 100 in 2022 - it does give me less to choose from and I’m plenty annoyed that we’ll have to save Taylor Swift for next year, but I did find plenty to flesh out this list and had to make some cuts, which ultimately means I don’t consider this as bad of a year as some have made it out to be - and we’re going to start the Honourable Mentions with a bit of a curveball…
For those who forgot from earlier this year, I didn’t exactly love Bad Bunny’s new album this year - it was bloated, he dragged with him a lot of guests who were hit-or-miss, and ultimately my favourites from the album didn’t last on the charts, they were slightly more experimental deep cuts. Hell, even I’m surprised that this is the song that stuck the most for me - it’s Bad Bunny in pure braggadocious club mode, all sneering attitude as he rattles off the names of women he’s sleeping with, with a sandy but bassy Latin trap bounce where he can credibly sell the arrogance. But then the song shifts after the siren and you get a stark snapshot of the guy who can’t really love any of them and the girls who want in regardless, and while it’s still an ego trip, the darker edge with the spookier synth somehow works. Again, not my favourite from the album, but still a solid banger regardless.
Yes, I absolutely know this is cheating - Taylor Swift rerecording ‘All Too Well’ so it can break all kinds of records as the longest song to hit #1 feels like the sort of move that should automatically disqualify it from this list. But I have some qualifiers, the first being that I’ve long had contentious opinions on Red not nearly being as good as many claim, even if I’ve come to get why ‘All Too Well’ works over the years, and the other… well, for as much as I don’t mind Swift shoving more verses that simultaneously feel more adult but in the spirit of young heartbreak, it’s also not better than the original in the arrangement and production. Jack Antonoff has a bad habit of leaving a lot of empty space in the mix, and a real opportunity was blown to flesh out the melody in those longer passages, especially as a song of this length can start testing one’s patience. But yeah, ‘All Too Well’ probably deserved to be a hit a decade ago, and I don’t mind giving it flowers now, if only for the line ‘so casually cruel in the name of being honest’, a line that burns hotter every day. Sometimes it’s worth remembering, you know?
How is it that Lil Nas X probably delivered the pop rock song that lasted the best on the year-end Hot 100 this year? Well, mostly because he nails everything that this sort of wild blast of young love should be, with horny intensity balanced out with heartbroken yearning for the gay black boy of his dreams. But I think it was the arrangement that picked this up a notch for me - the sharp, rattling jangle of the acoustic guitar against the more programmed percussion but never to the point where the song feels stiff, there’s a commitment to melodic groove and flow that even if the end of the hook feels a bit abrupt, it remains bouncy and fun, the sort of choppy acoustics for which I really have a soft spot! And the polish is evident too - Ryan Tedder of all people is a cowriter and producer and you can hear some of it in the breezy feel of the song, but Lil Nas X adds an anchor point of intensity that Tedder’s rarely had. In other words, another shot of versatility from Lil Nas X… man, I wish this year allowed him to lean into better parts of it.
On the flipside, sometimes you have someone who is so confident and set in his lane that it picks up resonance almost by sheer force of will. And while you could argue that Luke Combs asserting that yes, he would have done everything the same even if he wasn’t successful and is going to keep on doing it can feel a bit dramatically inert, by god he sells it. The note-perfect details of playing the dives on the road against the windswept rumble of guitar with slight piano accents, and the grit of Combs just belting it out shows the sort of bone-deep commitment to his passion that even if it’s making solid, unexceptional country music, he’s owning it. And here’s the truth - if the neotraditional revival hadn’t happened in the past few years, Combs probably would have had to live that anonymous indie life, and while he’s thankful as hell he’s found success, his path wouldn’t be anything else. One of the best songs on that last album, it might not be my favourite of his, but it’s the reason I keep going back to check on him - because he keeps doin’ this.
I get the feeling I unironically like this song way more than I should. Doja Cat is simultaneously mimicking Nicki Minaj on her second verse to the point of shouting her out - and arguably surpassing anything else Nicki put out this year except maybe ‘Do We Have A Problem’, which really deserved a chart run - and Playboi Carti on the hook, which only keeps proving my point that women do his schtick way better than he does! But more than that, the sheer quirk of Y2K’s instrumental plays into the oddball charm that’s always been what I’ve liked the most about Doja Cat - she actually has a sense of humour in her playful come-ons but with enough of an edge to know she’ll kick the ass of anyone who messes around - hell, she references Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape Of You’ to highlight how playful and disposable this all is! It’s a note of wild fun that I wish Doja Cat got a chance to flash more often, so happy they pushed it as a late album single! But speaking of Ed Sheeran…
Yeah, I’m saying it, the critical backlash to = was wildly out of proportion - just because it’s aggressively basic and occasionally had some weird lapses in writing and production doesn’t mean it’s bad or that great craftsmanship can’t win out, and ‘Shivers’ is a goddamn terrific pop song. Part of it again is that choppy acoustic riff, of which I’m an easy mark, but also because it’s a ridiculously tight dance cut with Fred Again… giving him a breezy, sandy groove, tight bassline, handclap, and synth horns that frankly sound better than they have any right to! And more importantly, outside of that weird ‘lipstick on my guitar’ line, Sheeran knows how to stay on script to nail the vibe. Call it chintzy, overcompressed, and a little corny - it is, totally, but Sheeran is owning it and that’s why it works; wildly underrated as a damn good pop song, and the album had more of them than you remember!
…so I’ve been gearing up to discuss this one for damn near two years, and at different points, this has been on the list proper - hell, in the midyear of 2021, I called it one of my favourite songs thus far that year. Since then I’ve cooled on it - you can only ride a melody cribbed from ‘Colder Weather’ by the Zac Brown Band for so long, and Wallen’s antics in 2022 have left me a lot less inclined to be sympathetic, but that’s also why the song can work, because his clumsy hookup doesn’t and he’s left stranded with sand in his boots, he doesn’t get the girl. Granted, between the more organic arrangement, the homespun romance of the verses, and intentional framing make it clear you’re supposed to feel bad for him… which is why I’ve been praying for a proper cover version of this song to go viral and replace it in the collective culture, but we aren’t that lucky. And yeah, I’m conscious of what putting this on my list even here says, but if anything it feels like a time capsule of a time when his attempted redemption arc at least seemed to be moving in the right direction, where it seemed like he was learning before, well, everything that happened after this became the sleeper hit. I can’t deny that I still like the song and think it’s well-constructed, maybe even great… but I’m also very much aware of everything it was and is doing, and I’m hoping that in everything I said on the last list, I can offset some messy feelings about this. We’ll have to see.
So okay, I’m not going to promise we’re dodging controversy for the rest of this list, but it’ll be easier to manage, I can say that, so…
10. The strange thing is that I’ve had this song since the late fall of 2020, long before it was pushed as a late album single. And as such it has cooled a bit on me over damn near two years, but it was always my favourite on that project, and thus…
I’m still a bit surprised that at least for now Chris Stapleton remains a singular entity in country, mainstream and indie - nobody quite has the soulful howl he does, the workman’s eye for detail and rock solid construction, or even just the savvy intelligence to keep bringing Dave Cobb in to produce, which gives his work a spare but textured richness all the more potent thanks to Cobb and his team finally learning how to produce and mix the bass properly! It leads to a song that feels more mature in its slow burn relationship drama, where they both know that any hookup is bound to rekindle old feelings, but they can’t quite pull away from the moment as the Hammond organ simmers and the guitar rumbles, especially on that deeper solo. It’s one of the reasons I get so exasperated at the bro- and boyfriend country from Music Row with sanitized sex songs or immature machismo - this feels grounded, written by men instead of boys, making something real. Even the Grammys got this right in recognizing it - just some excellent country soul that may have slipped off your radar. Go back and dig it up, it’s worth it.
9. Of course, the flipside to when you have boys writing country songs is that they can bring a different edge to the proceeding - note I said ‘different’, not ‘bad’, although I know for a fact that there’s going to be some raised eyebrows at me including this. But screw it, when a nasty breakup song has some genuine potency and pathos, I’ll take it!
But wait, some of you might say, Bailey Zimmerman is just an obvious ripoff of Morgan Wallen with a vocal tone close to Kid LAROI who didn’t seem to get the traction he needed for that debut EP, and we haven’t seen country music this bitter and sour in the breakup since Tyler Farr! And while a lot of that is true, it misses what makes Bailey Zimmerman click, arguably close to what made Juice WRLD and Kid LAROI work for their audiences in resoundingly petty bitterness that actually has the focus to stay on topic and more importantly not bother to frame him as sympathetic. That makes him a lot more interesting with pretty sharp and detailed patter on the hook and verses that don’t lean too hard on the sulky ‘treat you better’ sentiments and more on the melodrama, and that works for the keening pedal steel, seedy organ, warmer but still minor key guitars, an actual bassline, and live percussion - honestly it has more in common in the melody with post-grunge, and with that guitar solo, twenty years ago this kid would have made rock music. I ultimately put this above his other hit ‘Rock And A Hard Place’ this year because exhausted depression had less firepower than this - also a good song I should add - and while with Morgan Wallen now entrenched I don’t have high hopes he’s going to get momentum, but if you want something truly miserable that actually works, this is it. I hope it’s not where it ends.
8. The nostalgia cycle can be a little weird to contextualize on the pop charts, especially nowadays with Tiktok that can throw it completely haywire. Some folks are highlighting a 90s revival in some of the nu-disco and neotraditional country and pop punk experiments and every tentative stab into grunge in the indie scene, to say nothing of the ridiculous, Puff Daddy-esque sampling binge this year for which nobody asked. And I’d say there’s something to a 2000s revival as well, especially in pop rock, but there were other sounds and attitudes that I liked in the 2000s that I think could use a fresh coat of paint for the next generation. For example…
It drives me nuts that Em Beihold is likely going to wind up as another one-hit wonder - her EP this year was really good and I’m legit annoyed that I was pretty much the only one who cared about it - but maybe she’s just ahead of the curve in resurrecting a brand of piano-driven adult alternative that’s more Sara Bareilles than Sheryl Crow, still laiden with irony but with less outright pessimism or nihilism in trying to find something to keep you going. And in this case it’s updated with pharmaceuticals, with clattering pianos and crashing sound effects to highlight how precarious it all is, where you’re depressed and lonely and trying to plug up your mental health however you can - it’s no surprise this became a sleeper hit with younger audiences struggling in the wake of ongoing pandemic. More importantly it nailed why a lot of a lot of the forced cheer of 2022 felt so wrong to me: Em Beihold sounds like she’s got skin in the game and isn’t trying to plaster on a smile, because mental health struggles don’t work like that. In other words this felt way more relatable than it had any right to - and you couldn’t give her another hit, or any consistent traction? Hey radio programmers, if you’re bitching that you’re not getting hit singles, try taking the ones from under your goddamn nose! But they need more than quick repairs - in the meantime this is great, worth many a revisit.
7. I’ve been making year-end lists long enough that I don’t feel embarrassment for any of my picks, even retrospectively - yeah, Machine Gun Kelly might have torpedoed his career in 2022, even worse than the last time he did it in 2017, but that doesn’t make Tickets To My Downfall any less great. But in this case… there is a part of me that feels a little sheepish for just how much I like and even relate to some sentiments in this despite its very real flaws, but sometimes the love song works way better than it has any right to, even in its dumbest moments.
I don’t know how long Tyler Hubbard’s career is going to last away from Florida Georgia Line - at this point given why they split I’m more relieved he was the one who seems to have gotten the career - but I’m happy we got this along the way, the sort of song that leans into strengths that often go underappreciated. There’s still a bit too much polish in the vocal mixing, but it’s way more organic than Florida Georgia Line normally is with the warm acoustics and gentle patter supplementing the neotraditional touches and Hubbard’s always had a knack for a good hook. And yes, it’s another list-driven song where we get a bunch of country things around girls - and yes, Hubbard, you’re right, there’s no way your truck made her fall in love, she was just being nice implying it - and it would be so easy to dismiss this as dumb as any bro-country song. And yet… I don’t think I can do that - there’s a warmth and sweetness and gratitude to this song that feels a bit more lived in and real; it’s not smart, but it doesn’t need to be, especially with the desperate yearning to not screw it up. It’s not as leering as bro-country could be, or as sanitized as boyfriend country often is - it’s the happy medium of pop country, and with a legit fantastic hook, I’ll defend this.
6. So here’s something that’s been undeniably good for country music - yes, we’re still here, and we’ve got a decent bit more coming: they finally get streaming. And not just Music Row who can play the label game and load the playlists, sometimes you get those out of nowhere viral breakthrough that can play the indie game and even TikTok as well. And as such, we have what I think is the most surprising breakthrough of 2022…
Look, I’ve been reviewing Zach Bryan since 2020, I’ve been aware of him since earlier, I knew his history as a veteran who started making very acoustic, raw country singer-songwriter music that I often liked but didn’t love as being a bit too beholden to his influences like Jason Isbell. But that’s me as a critic talking about indie country, which is a relatively self-contained sphere that the majority of you don’t know, follow, or care about - you don’t expect these guys to go viral, so ‘Something In The Orange’ getting legit groundswell without tangible radio support only barely made sense! But it kept getting bigger, standing out even more starkly amidst the Hot 100 and suddenly mainstream critics started talking about him as an artist you couldn’t ignore, and it was legit thrilling, especially as ‘Something In The Orange’ reflects a newfound budget to go big. It sounds haunted and huge, the windswept, dangerous moments in the early morning, with Bryan’s rasp and command of symbolism and abstraction giving the relationship drama the visceral weight that’s primed to rip your guts out. Hell, I can imagine to some this would be the easiest possible pick for my top spot… and don’t get me wrong, it’s close, but there are better songs amidst the dozens across American Heartbreak and Summertime Blues, and while this indeed kicks ass, it wasn’t something that always pulled me back, you needed to have those intense moments to really sink in. Still, while there are breakthroughs I don’t see lasting, this one feels like something has awoken. Prepare yourselves.
5. …I mean, I called it last year, you shouldn’t be surprised.
In retrospect, Adele’s 30 seems to have not performed on the charts like folks might have expected. She got one more tangible with ‘Oh My God’ - it’s fine, not something I’d seek out - but everything else didn’t seem to go anywhere, at least stateside. Maybe it was because ‘Easy On Me’ cast such a long shadow - yeah, opening the album run with a piano ballad is a tried and true formula, but there was so much more here! I love the subtle bass pickups in the low end as the song builds, I love how Adele’s command of her heartbreak has evolved as she knows there are bigger stakes with her son in the picture, I love that the moral ambiguity is still here in her desperate pleas for forgiveness in trying to find happiness, and I loved damn near every dance remix I heard of this song, profane as they might sound because Adele could easily be a mainstream pop diva type with her range and this song fits shockingly well into a synth-driven power ballad! Again, you can argue this is more of a 2021 song, but it is Billboard’s rules and this earned its spot - and thank god for it, fantastic song.
4. I know for a fact that the placement of this song will be the most contentious element of this list, hands down. It’s the most out-of-place song on the Hot 100, the sort of hit that doesn’t make sense to be charting this decade, let alone in 2022. It got its traction thanks to a placement in a Netflix series and even seeding some of the ground for crossover viral success, you couldn’t have predicted so many getting behind it - even the radio didn’t blow a good hit even if it’s an older one that outside of the UK never got the proper attention in its time. It’s worth highlighting that on its original release in 1985, it did chart on the Hot 100 and peaked around #30 - and looking at its run this time… they said they had better taste back then.
I’m almost at a loss for words to talk about ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’. I could talk about Kate Bush and Hounds Of Love, I could talk about how that slightly weird cello sound actually came from a synthesizer and only reinforces the alien, ethereal feel of the song as it picks up its percussive gallop. I could talk about how the song is a stirring plea that would demand men and women see across the gender divide only further entrenched in the mid-80s UK, and how there’s tangible queer subtext that can be heard then and now. I could also highlight that awesome interview from when Kate Bush trolled a bewildered reporter who took the song too literally and Bush said she’d never even seen a hill! I could also highlight just how resonant it could feel in American pop culture in 2022, amidst the Stranger Things nostalgia wave and all of Bush’s artistic descendents across indie music and pop. I could also highlight that while this song kicks all amounts of ass, I don’t always return to it because you need to be in the right mood for Kate Bush and some of the production and some of the production has aged in odd ways. I would also feel a little strange placing a cult classic of the 80s in the top 3 for hits in 2022, especially as I have Kate Bush songs I’d place on a higher pedestal. Either way, this was the gift of pop this year nobody saw coming - I wonder what deal with God was made to bring it to light…
3. Okay, the next two songs… I’ve already referenced how egregiously obvious sampling in 2022 got a little out of hand, but there’s something else that arguably has persisted longer in this genre and irritates me a little more: the very obvious callback to old 90s country songs. I wasn’t against the references so much as I was the laziness that often seemed to underscore them, where it was more about pointing at the past and saying ‘look, we have taste too’ than actually doing anything new with them. But it looks like some folks finally learned their lesson here…
Again, this probably could also count as a 2021 hit, but screw it - Scotty McCreery released it as a very late single as easily the best song on his album, it actually only started charting proper this year, it counts! And I’ve been a fan of Scotty McCreery for a while now - yeah, his material skews safe and neotraditional but he’s got a fantastic voice and a sharp eye for picking songs with rich detail and emotive texture, and that’s exactly what this is. And like his best track, ‘Feel Good Summer Song’, it’s about reckoning with the hard reality that when you have a soundtrack of your life, it can get caught up in messy, complicated emotions and sometimes make them sting all the harder, in this case a string of truly excellent George Strait songs weaved together into this breakup narrative. But what I liked was that McCreery got that this also had to ‘feel’ like a George Strait song - neotraditional, grounded in its detail, plainspoken but revealing, and he sells the frustration so well you almost don’t realize how clever the song is. You can argue it only got traffic because it’s a modern country song referencing the 90s, but it does so in a better way than, say, Old Dominion does, and with McCreery now independent but still able to leverage his connections, hopefully we can see him move more like this - damn straight.
2. But speaking of references… if you had told me eight years ago that this guy would have placed on my list at all, I would have laughed in your face. Six years ago, maybe, he had a truly fantastic song that just missed the cutoff in 2016 because that year didn’t know what to do with country at all, but when he first debuted, most well known as a frat brother of Luke Bryan who sold merch for him before striking off as a bro-country artist and a c-tier one at that, nobody could have predicted this. And yet, he stuck around, he outlasted his own genre, and thus…
I’m almost at a loss for words again - Cole Swindell made one of the best country hits of the year, that shouldn’t be possible! Now for context, he’s heavily relying on an interpolation of the mid-90s country classic ‘Heads Carolina, Tails California’ by Jo Dee Messina, a song I absolutely adore and that’s part of my childhood, I can’t get around that. So a slightly overpolished remake or cover of the song by Cole Swindell would usually piss me off… but he plays a different hand: the song is set at a karaoke bar and a girl is belting it out and he’s so entranced by the performance he tries to make a move and it’s a coin flip whether it even works! One thing I’ll give Swindell over the past few years is that he’s remarkably good at playing a nice enough guy where more often than not the play for the girl doesn’t really work, but he’s still so caught up in the magic of the experience that he doesn’t take it too deeply to heart; it stings, but he can work with it. It’s ultimately the same principle behind ‘Best Song Ever’ by One Direction, only Swindell names the song and it’s a classic and it creates such a big romantic moment! I should mention that Jo Dee Messina did hop on a remix of this song with Cole Swindell that’s more of a proper mashup, and it sadly doesn’t really work - they don’t have much chemistry, and it distorts that callback to memory that could be so special. But in the meantime… goddamn it, the bros that actually stuck around are now making good music, what timeline are we even in?
But as much as I could gloat about how bro-country was never quite as awful as some made it out to be, there’s a whole swathe of hits that I’m more familiar with because I’m Canadian and our charts are always better. And in this case, very tangibly so, mostly because the good viral crossovers got more momentum, we didn’t have as many disposable album bombs, and Dawn FM got a respectable slate of singles, so with that in mind…
From The Weeknd, ‘Sacrifice’ - not as good as its obvious influences like Michael Jackson, but that groove grew on me, what can you do?
From Frank Ocean, ‘Lost’ - we had channel ORANGE era Frank Ocean go viral and chart, I think that makes my point for me!
From Swedish House Mafia and The Weeknd, ‘Moth To A Flame’ - if there was going to be a song from that Swedish House Mafia comeback project that’s worth a damn, it’s this one, and The Weeknd nails the haunted, dancefloor vibe.
From Farruko, ‘Pepas’ - this got caught between years in the US but thankfully crossed over as the Latin pop banger that absolutely wrecks dancefloors. And given that I actually hit a few of them this year, I can testify how great this is!
From The Weeknd, ‘Out Of Time’ - one of the best ballads of The Weeknd’s career, I love the low-key video, the city pop sample is excellent, there is absolutely no excuse why didn’t cross over down south, just saying!
And from Burna Boy, ‘Last Last’ - this was nearly a full-on hit in the US, it got caught in the shuffle of album bombs and never quite got enough traction, and that’s a shame - terrific acoustic groove and multi-tracked hook, Burna Boy nails the emotional drama… it might be the first time a crossover afrobeat song really stuck deep for me, this was absolutely fantastic!
But now onto the final pick…
1. This is the most obvious and predictable my #1 has been since… well, 2020. Hell, I telegraphed it last year if you were paying attention, it’s made one of my lists already. But in all due fairness, we did get it for a full year and it never got old, so let’s keep…
I swear, for me Silk Sonic is a goddamn cheat code. The killer liquid bassline and glittery keys around the guitar and terrific horns, the fantastic chemistry between Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars that nails the impeccable balance between retro cheese and modern R&B classic with possibly Bruno Mars’ best falsetto ever, the terrific drumwork imported from Homer Steinweiss of the Dap-Kings, and how the song just seemed to instantly click regardless of season! And what I love is that despite how insanely silly this song is - it inspired TikTok memes just with the line ‘not to be dramatic, but I wanna die’, which is the self-aware callback to Bruno Mars’ ‘Grenade’ none of us expected but we all deserved - to say nothing of how ridiculously horny their frustrations are given their current paramour’s ex and kids and baggage and cheating, and yet by the hook they still manage to sound cool as they’re just smoking and lethargically contemplating what the hell they can do now beyond ending it and ‘giving her back to the city’, a line that’s both instantly dated but also somehow timeless! And yet what I like the most is the framing - Silk Sonic are players seeing the consequences of their actions, the followthrough and they know it, which is why they can be regretful that it ends while also cussing her out - a song like this without any charm or humour becomes melodramatic or insufferable, and yet Silk Sonic ride that narrow balance to make it work. I’ll admit there were points where I wasn’t sure how well this would age, which is true about any throwback no matter how polished or ‘authentic’ it is, and Bruno Mars has fallen victim to this before… but then I’d throw on the album and a smile would spread across my face and pure pop craftsmanship would win me over again. Hilariously biting but yet strangely gorgeous and romantic, this was a song for all seasons, and my favourite hit song of 2022. I’m fairly certain Silk Sonic were only here for a good time, not a long time, but what a time it was - I’ll certainly take it!