Compiling a year end list can be tricky. Do you include the songs you think are the best, or the most important? The ones you enjoyed the most, or the ones you think will hold up longest? Do you acknowledge the consensus choices, or keep things interesting by being a contrarian? Do you try to be objective, or steer fully into subjectivity?
Everybody’s personal calculus is a little different. This year, I’ve gone with the songs that I found myself playing on repeat. There are old favourites here and new discoveries. Artists ascending and stars in their twilight. Bands returning from hiatus, and new phenoms taking off for the first time.
Without further adieu, here’s the 52 songs that represent 2019 to me.
10. ScHoolboy Q Numb Numb Juice
On “Numb Numb Juice,” ScHoolboy Q arrives ahead of the beat, as if he’s just pulled up and hopped out of a two-door coupe like a jack-in-the-box, ready to fire at the forehead of the opposition.
Q’s menacing flow is accented by jittery high hats and a beat that sounds like the funereal peal of bells. “Numb Numb Juice” is snack-sized aggression. With less than two minutes on the track, he has just enough time to make his threats, run through a list of “bitch shit” before assuring you that you are, in fact “a bitch boy, on my mama.” Just as quickly as he arrives, he’s gone. “Numb Numb Juice” may not have been the best rap song of 2019, but it was totally, brutally engrossing, and I couldn’t help playing it over, and over, and over.
9. Helado Negro Running
“Running” is a breezy, relaxing tune. Roberto Carlos Lange, a.k.a Helado Negro, deploys his voice as an instrument. Beginning with drawn out “ouus” over what sounds like waves crashing on a beach, he invites you to release your stress, to breathe deep and exhale.The words he chooses to sing over soothing piano lines. The meaning of the lyrics seem almost secondary to their musicality. “I feel you,” he croons, generously extending the last word, “in my mind/ all the time/ I see you/ in my hands/ everyday.” Then, the song’s real movement begins: “You got me running, running, running, running, running, running, running, running, just like you.” The song is cyclical – like waves crashing, like breathing – half way through, Lange returns to the beginning and does it all again. Lange has described the song as a poem written to assuage a sense of anxiety. Hit play, hit play again, hit it again, let the song cycle through, and you’ll feel that same calming sense.
8. Stormzy Crown
This summer, Stormzy rode the success of his 2017 debut Gang Signs & Prayers to a headlining slot at Glastonbury, becoming the first UK rapper to headline the annual music festival. Writer Zadie Smith hailed the performance as a coronation in a New Yorker article titled “King Michael Wears his Crown.” For his part, Stormzy embraced his role as British rap royalty on the single “Crown,” released days before the festival. But instead of sounding triumphant or running a victory lap, “Crown” finds Stormzy more meditative. Kingship weighs heavy on him – “Searching every corner of my mind/ looking for the answers I can’t find/ I have my reason and life has its lessons/ I try to be grateful and count all my blessings/ but heavy is the head that wears the crown,” he sings on the hook.
When I listen to “Crown”, I can’t help but think of Stormzy’s interpretation of Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beams,” which he performed on BBC 1’s Live Lounge in 2016. The fingerprints of “Ultralight Beams” is all over “Crowm” – the gospel choir, the spiritual themes, the sparse beat, the aching hook. But Stormzy makes the template his own, producing a track that is at once a prayer and a proclamation.
7. Bruce Springsteen Hello Sunshine
Bruce Springsteen’s 2016 autobiography, Born to Run, is, in many ways, a rumination on life spent on the road. In its pages, the Boss crisscrosses America and the planet Earth several times. That same ethos permeates his discography – the book’s namesake and his best known album are literally about being born to run, and his songs and albums are full of people racing, chasing, driving and, of course, running.
“Hello Sunshine” – as great a late-era Springsteen song as any – is both a reflection and a repudiation of that wanderer’s lifestyle. As bright steel guitar, soft marching snares and rock-solid bass gradually build to a crescendo of emotional clarity, Springsteen, after years fulfilling his nomadic destiny, imparts some hard-won wisdom: “Fall in love with alone/ you end up that way” and “Miles to go/ is still miles away.” After decades living in the darkness on the edge of town, it sounds like Bruce has finally got the sunny day he’s been waiting for. This song, subdued compared to many in his catalogue, is a simple request to live a little longer in that light.
6. Lil Nas X feat. Billy Ray Cyrus Old Town Road (Remix)
Here’s all you need to know about “Old Town Road”: On Grey Cup Sunday, right before Keith Urban took the stage for his halftime performance, my father-in-law – who, in his youth, was a fan of classic rock like the Eagles and Supertramp, and now listens exclusively to the Christian music radio station – and I began discussing country music. He asked me if I knew “that song by Billy Ray Cyrus and Lil Nas X,” and then proceeded to extol “Old Town Road” and quote obscure moments from its music video. Even my father-in-law knows about Old Town Road!
The country/rap hybrid was a damn phenomenon this year. It was a totally unique listening experience, and no matter how much you tried to hate it, you couldn’t help but get infected by its charm.
5. Bon Iver Hey, Ma
As with many Bon Iver songs, I can’t tell you what “Hey, Ma” is about. Presumably, based on the title, it has something to do with his mother, or somebody’s mother, or maybe a girlfriend, but I’m not even certain about that. He wants a bath, and at one point he’s smoking dope. Is it about childhood, or the presidential election? Nostalgia, or phoning your mother? Who’s to say?
Reading the lyrics of “Hey, Ma” – or really an Bon Iver song – can be perplexing. Each line appears disconnected from those preceding and following it, and it’s easy to imagine Justin Vernon writing the song by pulling words and phrases out of a hat. But the sum of the component parts packs a wallop. There is an emotional clarity to the song, even if the literal meaning of the words remains opaque. This is Bon Iver’s greatest strength – his ability to make you feel something true, something just below the surface, even when the meaning isn’t obvious. “Hey, Ma” does that; it will have you all in your feelings, yearning for the past, or maybe your mother, or maybe the future. Who’s to say?
4. Pedro the Lion Black Canyon
Listening to “Black Canyon,” sparks tremendous jealousy for me. In less than 300 words and six minutes, David Bazan crafts a perfect, compelling short story better than some authors who use pages and pages.
The story goes like this: Bazan’s uncle, a paramedic, is among the first responders at the scene of a suicide where a man has walked into oncoming traffic on the freeway. Inspecting the carnage, the man starts talking to the paramedics, requesting they “get this truck off my back/Don’t know what I expected/ but that hurt really bad.” It is, of course, a metaphor.
The song has emotional stakes, a full cast of completely developed characters, and a clear message. It is a lesson in concision, and as a writer, I am astounded every time I hear it. Toss Bazan’s lethargic vocals and the blaring guitars into the mix, and you end up with a highly underrated piece of music.
3. Sharon Van Etten Seventeen
As we age, the urge towards nostalgia feels inevitable. We pine for our youth, for our days of running free and wild. On “Seventeen,” Sharon Van Etten takes that backward glance and teases it out it its fullest extent. “I used to be free/ I used to be seventeen,” she sings, almost bemoaning her lost youth.
The lyrics to “Seventeen” read as Van Etten imparting some hard-won words of wisdom to a younger protégé. “I know what you’re gonna be/ You’re crumbling up just to see/ Afraid that you’ll be just like me,” she wails at the songs emotional climax. Only after you watch the stunning music video, however, do you realize that Van Etten is in fact in dialogue with her younger self, the self that used to be, the self that was once on those streets.
2. Tyler, The Creator EARFQUAKE
It’s incredible to think the same artist responsible for “Yonkers” – the abrasive track that prominently featured the eating of a cockroach in its music video – could be capable of a song as beautiful as “EARFQUAKE.” Tyler, the Creator, who made his name early in his career for inciting controversy, has officially pivoted to a gentler, more earnest path. It is wonderful.
On “EARFQUAKE,” Tyler sounds utterly vulnerable as he confesses to a love interest, “You make my earth quake/ oh you make my earth quake/ riding around, your love be shakin’ me up/ and it’s making my heart break,” before pleading “don’t leave/ it’s my fault.” This love, as true as it is, is built on a fault line, and it threatens to all come crumbling down at any moment.
1. Vampire Weekend Harmony Hall
Vampire Weekend’s first single in six years heralded a triumphant return. After a period of silence since 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City and the loss of key founding member Rostam Batmanglij, fans were justified in wondering if the band’s future output would live up to its past endeavours. “Harmony Hall” was the first indication that they would.
The thing that strikes you, the first time you hear “Harmony Hall,” is the sheer beauty of its rapidly plucked guitar. The lick’s ascending and descending notes are hypnotic and relaxing. The softness pulls you into the song, trapping you as singer Ezra Koenig begins his verse.
Then, the song switches abruptly, as the guitar makes way for twinkly piano behind the chorus. Koenig encapsulates what it feels like to live in these deeply divided times – especially if you spend any amount of time online – with a series of subtle metaphors: “Anger wants a voice/ voices want to sing/ singers harmonize/ till you can’t hear anything.” He then bemoans the eternal struggle – “every time a problem ends/ another one begins.”
And then the chorus gives way to the song’s thesis, with Koenig wailing “I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t want to die.” The line, itself, is both old and new, repurposed from 2013’s “Finger Back” but given its own life. Here, it becomes an declaration for the times, a rallying cry to move forward.
Finally, there is the utter release of Koenig’s soaring “ous.” They are spacious and lofty, cathartic in the way sounds often are.
The various elements of the song add and build and add and build to a crescendo, before Vampire Weekend return to the ground, trailing off with that mesmerizing, indelible guitar. Simply put, it’s a beautifully crafted song, and one that I listened to constantly. It suits warm weather and cold. It suits happy days and sad. In short, it was unquestionably the song I will most associate with 2019.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS:
Solange Almeda Bill Callahan Angela Hillsong UNITED Another in the Fire Denzel Curry AUTOMATIC Carly Rae Jepsen Automatically in Love Billie Eilish bad guy Clairo Bags Jamila Woods BASQUIAT Beyoncé Before I Let Go Ariana Grande break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored FKA twigs cellophane Cate Le Bon Daylight Matters Burna Boy Destiny ROSALÍA Milionària/Dio$ No$ Libre del Dinero Danny Brown Dirty Laundry Chance the Rapper Do You Remember Mannequin Pussy Drunk II Taylor Swift False God Lana Del Rey Fuck it I love you Lauren Jenkins Give up the Ghost Charli XCX & Christine and the Queens Gone slowthai Gorgeous Brittany Howard He Loves Me John Mayer I Guess I Just Feel Like The National Light Years Wilco Love is Everywhere (Beware) Sturgill Simpson Make Art Not Friends Pedro the Lion Model Homes Normani Motivation Bon Iver Naeem Big Thief Not Polo G Pop Out Denzel Curry RICKY John Mark McMillan The Road, The Rocks, and the Weeds Better Oblivion Community Center Service Road PUP Sibling Rivalry Purple Mountains Snow is Falling in Manhattan HAIM Summer Girl Vampire Weekend This Life Kanye West Use This Gospel The Mountain Goats Younger Maxo Kream 3AM
3rd Time 