The 100 Best Songs of 2018

Ariana Grande released her exes with love. Pusha-T spilled the tea on Drake’s baby. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks took a flawed country to task, and CupcakKe debuted approximately 30 new metaphors for the male anatomy. This carnival ride of a year had an equally wild soundtrack every step of the way. Here are our picks for the best songs of the year.

Listen to selections from this list on our Spotify playlist and Apple Music playlist.

Post Malone: “Rich and Sad”

On April 11, 1964, the burgeoning Beatles both topped the Billboard charts with “Can’t Buy Me Love” and set a record for the most songs in the Top 20 by a single artist, with six. That record held for 54 years, until this May, when Post Malone placed nine tracks in the Top 20, including “Rich & Sad” at No. 14. Some may consider this changing of the guard a pop travesty of apocalyptic proportions—or, at least, a shameless byproduct of newfangled streaming metrics—but there is actually some kismet at work here.

“Rich & Sad” is buoyed by a psychedelic wheeze that recalls nothing less than “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and the song’s regretful message is a 21st-century twist on Paul McCartney’s 1964 revelation that more money does not necessarily lead to love. “I would throw it all away/I just keep on wishin’ that the money made you stay,” Post laments, sobbing into a pile of hundred dollar bills. The track brings the latent woe in the singer’s voice to the fore—how he often seems to be sinking in quicksand while yowling of the spoils of success, like a forehead-tatted canary in late capitalism’s doomed coal mine. Because as long as there are rich pop stars who need real love, there will be songs about how they can’t afford to find it. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Post Malone, “Rich & Sad”

Miya Folick: “Stock Image”

For Miya Folick, the traditional stress relief of a therapeutic soak isn’t working. At the start of “Stock Image,” she climbs in the warm water but only remembers to leave when it’s become so cold that she’s physically blue, too. In this vulnerable moment, she forgives herself for her faults and embraces her eccentricities: “You hide in the bones of a stock image,” she sings at the close of her chorus, her voice taking on a sudden operatic tremor. Pulsing drums and radiant synths propel and lift her, goading her into sharing intimate details—the hair swept under her bed, the long stares in her mirror, the fact that she struggles with it all. Avoiding escapism and platitudes, Folick pushes past hardship by first accepting it. “Stock Image” is a rare multivalent motivational song, as much a poke in the ribs as it is a reassuring pat on the back. –Grayson Currin

Listen: Miya Folick, “Stock Image”

Mac Miller: “Self Care”

Mac Miller let us know he wasn’t all right. In interviews, the rapper was always open about addiction, and on his final album, Swimming, he was even more candid and unflinching. No song painted a grimmer portrait of his final months than “Self Care,” a stark account of the external and internal forces that drove him to self-medicate; the track's only relief comes in the form of a woozy coda that plays like an implicit relapse. Following his death, the song is even more difficult to listen to, especially a wishful line about having all the time in the world. Miller may have recognized that he was waging a losing battle, but there’s still something beautiful about his resolve to keep fighting. –Evan Rytlewski

Listen: Mac Miller, “Self Care”

Young Fathers: “In My View”

There are biblical overtones to “In My View,” from Young Fathers’ third album, Cocoa Sugar. In this Scottish trio’s half-rapped, half-sung verses, references to kings, saints, sinners, and Delilah abound, and wisps of background vocals evoke a holy choir. If this is a hymn, though, it’s a harsh one, with a chorus insisting that progress comes with a price, possibly suggesting an eye-for-an-eye worldview. But nothing in “In My View” is perfectly clear, even if it is one of Young Fathers’ most accessible tracks to date. The group is still adept at crafting music and messages that don’t lend themselves to easy interpretation, no matter how clearly the words are delivered. So “In My View” becomes a sinewy soul song that swings and sways while riding an undercurrent of tension and uncertainty. Sweating out a marching band beat while simultaneously meditating on desire and betrayal, Young Fathers make anxiety sound smooth, and then the opposite, too. –Marc Masters

Listen: Young Fathers, “In My View”

Sharon Van Etten: “Comeback Kid”

Maybe now people can stop calling Sharon Van Etten “confessional” and stop assuming her songs are purely autobiographical. In “Comeback Kid,” the first single from her forthcoming LP Remind Me Tomorrow, she comes across as something between a film noir heroine, an Outsiders-esque rebel, and an aging boxer. She’s put away the strings and pedal steels in favor of synth and organ, at times bringing to mind Siouxsie Sioux. And in the song’s video, she’s all dark-pop ’80s glam in blood red lipstick, with an unwavering stare. “I’m the runaway, I’m the stay-out-late,” she declares, tough and incandescent. –Rebecca Bengal

Listen: Sharon Van Etten, “Comeback Kid”

Frank Ocean: “Moon River”

Joaquin Oliver, an avowed Frank Ocean fan who loved Blonde so much he’d dyed his own hair to match, was only 17 when he was gunned down in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting this past February. The same day, Ocean released a cover of the melancholy “Moon River,” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It was a coincidence; Ocean has made a habit of dropping songs untethered to any external schedule, preserving his shrouded, shamanic presence. On its own, his version already had a haunting quality, his quivering voice splitting harmonies over plaintive keys. But according to reports, some friends of Oliver’s saw the confluence as “divine timing,” the lyrics about a “moon river, wider than a mile” and “crossing it in style someday” ringing like a blessed premonition of their friend peacefully floating away.

There have been so many random shocks of tragedy this year that mourning can feel a daily experience. But here, in Ocean’s chance release of “Moon River,” was proof of our world’s unplanned joys, too. It was the ether providing a balm at the same time it produced tragedy: an old-fashioned song sung in 1961 by Audrey Hepburn, pitch-shifted by a modern healer into something to soothe us. Joaquin Oliver might never have gotten to hear the song, but Frank Ocean’s “Moon River” will now always be his, a tiny consolation for a tragedy too big. –Alex Frank

Listen: Frank Ocean, “Moon River”

Amber Mark: “Love Me Right”

“Love Me Right” is a wounded plea to a romantic partner who’s gone cold, a sumptuous R&B anthem that dips into house, samba, even smooth jazz. It’s also a neat snapshot of what New York singer, songwriter, and producer Amber Mark does so well. Her lyrics are conversational, relating to feelings anyone could experience, and her delivery rarely feels flashy. But her husky voice and globe-trotting sensibility bring all this to a place of understated opulence. In songs, as in relationships, intimacy sometimes means not having to spell everything out for the other person—and in the case of “Love Me Right,” the other person just doesn’t get it, and it’s not clear if they ever will. So when Mark asks, “Why won’t you realize you gotta love me right baby?” it already sounds like she’s moving on. –Marc Hogan

Listen: Amber Mark, “Love Me Right”

Aphex Twin: “T69 Collapse”

It’s hard to think of another electronic artist who’s enjoyed a late-career rejuvenation like Richard D. James. Instead of glum, self-plagiarizing stagnation, his artistic middle age has been a sustained eruption of surprise and delight. Continuing his current run, the Collapse EP bursts its skin with ripening creativity: a feeling of plenitude caught in its vocal snippet that promises to lead the listener to “the land of abundance.”

Opener “T69 Collapse” is an apt herald of the richness within. It starts with the whispery crispness of intricately edited beats, skidding and slipping like a tap-dancer on an oily floor: a flashback to the serene frenzy of late-’90s drill‘n’bass, when James and his IDM comrades strove to beat jungle at its own breakbeat game. But things get really interesting mid-song, when the collapse referenced in the title occurs: a juddering tumble of drums that feels like an astrophysical rupture, time itself swirling down the cosmic plughole. The tune then pulls itself together like reversed film of an explosion, gliding out with feverishly dainty beatwork offset by a typically Aphex pensive melody, daubed in milky synth so tonally smeared it feels like your ears are being pulled out of focus. Twenty-seven years into his recording career and approaching his life’s half-century mark, James exhibits a limber vitality and an evergreen joy in creation that’s as remarkable as it is enviable. –Simon Reynolds

Listen: Aphex Twin, “T69 Collapse”

Charli XCX: “Track 10”

Released at the very end of last year, Charli XCX’s Pop 2 mixtape saw the electro-pop star perfecting her ongoing collaboration with maximalist bubblegum collective PC Music. Closer “Track 10” serves as a fitting end to a record in which angelic, sugary electronics easily turn dark, even grotesque. An odyssey of trust issues, the song is able to achieve that rare balance between extreme artifice and total honesty: Amid an effervescent rush of beats and vocal loops, Charli XCX hits the bridge and suddenly we’re home free, fear turned to fearlessness under the force of her belt. Her voice frays through the Auto-Tune at one point, like a speck of mud flung onto something very shiny, before giving way to harps and trap. As this crumbling volcano of a song goes down, it leaves the listener with one last “It’s Charli, baby” whispered in their ear. As if it could be anyone else. –Jillian Mapes

Listen: Charli XCX, “Track 10”

700 Bliss: “Ring the Alarm”

Fellow Philadelphians Moor Mother and DJ Haram each make dense, noisy music on their own, but Spa 700, their debut EP under the name 700 Bliss, is as subtle as it is bracing. On the release’s sparse highlight “Ring the Alarm,” Haram constructs a rhythm that’s both insistent and halting, creating an experience that feels like listening to your own heartbeat. Into this web, Moor Mother injects blunt statements rapped with authoritative urgency, punctuating her repeated phrases with quick breaths. One of her bullet-like couplets—“You heard what I said/That anti-black’s programmed in your head”—sticks particularly hard, shot as it is through the barrel of Haram’s increasingly intense samples. The duo’s imperatives for action are certainly clear and timely, but “Ring the Alarm” shows that political music can be nuanced and brutally effective at once. –Marc Masters

Listen: 700 Bliss, “Ring the Alarm”

Future: “Hate the Real Me”

Future’s music traces the occasional soaring victory and plenty other wins that are small, petty, spiteful. He’s interested in making you jealous of his furs and his girls; private flights to tropical villas are worth it if an ex sees them on Instagram and feels a pang of envy. But none of these things—pettiness, spite, Turks, Caicos—are the animating force behind Future’s music. That would be pain—the raw, uncut sort that lingers in the belly for years without end. “Hate the Real Me,” the last track on his and Zaytoven’s BEASTMODE 2, recognizes that pain as unresolvable. On the chorus, Future drones, “I’m tryna get high as I can”; the first verse has an extended passage about a woman describing her attempts to sleep with him, and then he lists each person who’s heard the rumor while sounding increasingly, irretrievably empty. There’s a reference to when he was shot as a teenager and a startling aside: “A sober mind wasn’t good for me.” Even his voice trembles. –Paul A. Thompson

Listen: Future, “Hate the Real Me”

Carly Rae Jepsen: “Party for One”

A lot of people still want a sequel to “Call Me Maybe,” perhaps none more than Carly Rae Jepsen herself. But even though everything she’s released since has followed a similarly winsome template, “Party for One” is Jepsen’s first explicit sequel to that hit. The intros are strikingly similar, the synths in the background play the same melody as the strings of “Call Me Maybe,” and there’s a direct lyrical callback.

Again, Jepsen pairs sweeter-than-average music and blunter-than-average lyrics. For decades, it hasn’t been remarkable for a pop star to refer to masturbation—but it is remarkable to do so while setting the disarming, 1 a.m. “you don’t care about me” text to the sugariest of hooks. “Party for One” sounds like ending credits music for a teen movie that adults love too, the kind where angst is resolved and new love blooms in one glorious party of dancing and cheering and synchronized bursts of spangles. And like all good Carly Rae Jepsen songs, it makes that sound like the very first time. –Katherine St. Asaph

Listen: Carly Rae Jepsen, “Party for One”

Azealia Banks: “Anna Wintour”

Maybe it’s a Vogue/voguing pun, but Anna Wintour is an odd talisman for what Azealia Banks has described as a song “about finding myself.” The legendary, bobbed magazine editor is an icon of consistency. Azealia Banks is… not an icon of consistency. Mercifully, on “Anna Wintour,” the rapper’s messy public persona yields the floor to a bracing showcase of her dexterity. She pulls triple duty as house diva, raging wraith, and cold-blooded killer, nailing each part and metabolizing Junior Sanchez’s fiercely generic Ibiza track into a raw energy source. “Anna Wintour” joins “thank u, next” and “Honey” among the few songs about self-love released this year that betray greater depth than vapid Instagram inspo, and it offers a reminder of what makes the often-frustrating Banks so great: Like this song’s namesake, she knows how to keep us looking. –Laura Snapes

Listen: Azealia Banks, “Anna Wintour”

Migos: “Stir Fry”

Compared with Migos’ 2017 single, “MotorSport”—which had a wafting ethereality that pointed to a new post-trap direction—follow-up “Stir Fry” has the trio playing by old-school rules, and winning. Originally made for T.I. but never used, Pharrell’s beat is from 2008 and harks back even further still, recalling the raw funk of Neptunes productions like Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass.” Running through the whole of “Stir Fry” is a nagging ear-worm that’s positively primordial: a whistling motif based on an organ lick from Mohawks’ 1968 R&B tune “The Champ,” already sampled hundreds of times in hip-hop. Takeoff, Offset, and Quavo ride the loping, breakbeat-like groove, reeling off references to cheap fast-food chains that contrast with their more standard name-checks of expensive foreign watches and cars. It fits the contradictory aspiration expressed in Quavo’s Auto-crooned hook: the wish and the vow to “still be real and famous.”

This was the year Migos became a meme: parodied in a “SNL” sketch, piling into James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke.” They now exist somewhere between street and simulacrum, turning snapshots of vice and viciousness into blithe and buoyant entertainment. The tongue-twisting, lip-smacking assonance of this irresistible single’s chorus—“In the kitchen, wrist-twistin’ like it’s stir fry”—makes crack preparation seem as harmless and wholesome as a cooking show. –Simon Reynolds

Listen: Migos, “Stir Fry”

Mount Erie: “Distortion”

Over 11 riveting minutes, “Distortion” finds Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum taking a series of plainspoken vignettes from his life and fastening them into a winding meditation on birth, life, death, responsibility, and resilience. We hear about the first two times Elverum saw a dead body—his great-grandfather, as a kid, and then his wife and the mother of his young child—and two portraits of wild young men who stare down the prospect of becoming fathers before they are ready. One of these is Elverum himself, who at age 23 hears that he may have impregnated someone with whom he’d had a random sexual encounter. And the other is the writer Jack Kerouac, the subject of a documentary Elverum watches during a long flight. There’s a lot to take in, and these stories at first seem arbitrary and unconnected. But as the song builds, they fold in on each other, collapsing the lines between past and the present, between reality and imagination, between what we can’t quite remember and what we will never forget. –Mark Richardson

Listen: Mount Eerie, “Distortion”

The Carters: “Apeshit”

No one was prepared for “Apeshit.” The lead single from Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s surprise joint album brims with cocky gratitude for the high life, flaunting Bey’s head-spinning flow and Jay’s louche, laid-back delivery over an expensive, pop-trap background courtesy of Pharrell. While clearly indebted to Migos, whose demo of the song leaked just a few days after the Carters’ came out, “Apeshit” is further proof that the zeitgeist belongs to this power couple, who can claim a cultural moment whenever they please. Bey lists off fashion houses and sports cars like they’re items on her grocery list, but it’s her sneering “Get off my dick” that really sets the tone. Of course, the song is only half the story—the lavish video for “Apeshit,” one of the year’s best, finds the Carters lounging and dancing around an empty Louvre in designer fineries, a seamless mashup of icons old and new. –Eric Torres

Listen: The Carters, “APESHIT”

Valee: “Vlone”

Valee is a serene individual. He keeps an indoor koi pond. And when an ABC sitcom hired him to make a cameo as himself, he was asked to portray a thoughtful, patient listener. As usual, the rapper is a calm presence on “Vlone.” He only has a handful of lines in the song, and none of them bestow any real wisdom—he just talks about the clothes he’s wearing. “These are vintage jeans,” he half-mumbles before offering a clipped affirmative: “Mhm.” The song is a subdued flex coupled with a borderline sleepy delivery. He’s got nice things, but he’s not going on and on about it. Over minimal instrumentation, he’s literally telling you to leave him alone. Especially if you’re broke. –Evan Minsker

Listen: Valee, “Vlone”

Amen Dunes: “Believe”

Freedom, Damon McMahon’s fifth record as Amen Dunes, is sprawling and shimmering, lingering somewhere between a memory and a daydream. Nowhere is this more true than on “Believe,” which examines the false promise of nostalgia while fully enveloped in its rosy glow. The song is built upon a series of impressions: snatches of spiritual imagery, glimpses into a childhood scored by the radio, brief pronouncements of devotion rounding out otherwise unintelligible verses. These details simmer over insistent plucks of guitar and swells of harmonica, building to a cathartic climax as McMahon gives thanks for his past and confronts his future head-on. –Madison Bloom

Listen: Amen Dunes, “Believe”

JPEGMAFIA: “Macaulay Culkin’’

In what’s been a breakout year for Baltimore rapper JPEGMAFIA, “Macaulay Culkin” offered a brief glimpse into the man behind the music, sans all the piss and vinegar that made up his excellent Veteran LP. On this rare moment of reflection, he name-checks a few recognizable figures to assess how he truly feels behind the scenes. “I got my hands on my face like Macaulay Culkin,” he spits at the top of the two-minute track. “Black man, white fam, I feel like Jason Jordan,” he claims, referencing the WWE star. He’s Rick and Morty in the science lab, Mulder and Scully solving mysteries. All of which is to say: There’s no telling who you’ll get from one JPEGMAFIA track to the next. –Marcus J. Moore

Listen: JPEGMAFIA, “Macaulay Culkin”

Lil Peep: “Life is Beautiful’’

It hurts to hear Lil Peep acknowledge that life can be worthwhile. He does it a lot, perhaps with some irony, in “Life Is Beautiful,” a song originally written and released in 2015 and then gorgeously reworked for the emo rap star’s posthumous album, Come Over When You’re Sober Pt. 2. On the track, Peep presents myriad of examples of how devastation is part of everyday life, whether it takes the form of a soul-crushing office job, being targeted by the police, or pining for the approval of your crush. But after each one, he seemingly shakes his head while asking the question: “Isn’t life beautiful?” The track’s producers, Smokeasac and IIVI, envelope his melancholy vocals with pooling synths and creaking cello lines, giving it a pulsating, breathing quality. In all its wounded grace, the song gets a chance at new life. –Michelle Kim

Listen: Lil Peep, “Life Is Beautiful”

Nilüfer Yanya: “Thanks 4 Nothing’’

Nilüfer Yanya is no Ariana Grande. Where the megastar won platitudes for her magnanimity in “thank u, next,” the young London singer’s “Thanks 4 Nothing” is the bitterest sort of kiss-off. Yanya’s protagonist doesn’t just see the world through a glass-half-empty lens; she takes a sip and smashes her tumbler on the ground. “Will you and I waste this?/I won’t even try in case it don’t work/I hate you and I hate this,” she sings, her voice as unsteady as a small, wounded bird. Romantic fatalism has rarely been so straight-up nihilistic.

Fortunately, Yanya knows how to make the most bilious heartbreak not just palatable, but even refreshing. Her pitter-pat drum machine and clean-toned guitar evoke the most wistful strains of vintage UK soul and indie, like Sade and Everything But the Girl, and her voice is nothing short of revelatory, capable of drawing a one-syllable word into a four-note melisma in the least showy way possible. And the vulnerability of her tone, octaves jumping like a catch in the throat, is the balm to counterbalance all that scorched-earth attitude, injecting every breath with a potent mixture of defiance and regret. –Philip Sherburne

Listen: Nilüfer Yanya, “Thanks 4 Nothing”

Rayvn Lenae: “Sticky’’

Nineteen-year-old R&B singer Ravyn Lenae may have been classically trained at the Chicago High School for the Arts, but she’s got a jones for experimental, jagged, synthy beats and left-of-center soul. Taken from her third EP, Crush, which was produced by the Internet’s Steve Lacy, “Sticky” is a full-tilt, psychedelic slow burn. By turns freaky and hypnotic, the song is like Lenae’s version of Prince’s Sign o' the Times deep cut “Strange Relationship”—the lyrics find her flummoxed in love, under the spell of topsy-turvy emotions. The intro, a flood of standalone organ chord changes, already sounds legendary; by the time the blunted groove drops and the hiccup melodies in the verses follow, you’ll be hooked. But it’s Lenae herself that makes “Sticky” glisten: Her gossamer mezzo sounds like a wicked mix of Kate Bush, Minnie Riperton, and Aaliyah. –Jason King

Listen: Ravyn Lenae, “Sticky”

Lolina: “The River’’

Lolina, the experimentalist formerly known as Inga Copeland, has always played her cards close to her chest. In Hype Williams, her duo with Dean Blunt, she toyed with further aliases, offered only the most cryptic interview responses and performed masked or from deep inside a dry-ice fog. Her 2018 album The Smoke, which switchbacks through dissonant piano counterpoints and spindly Casiotone fugues, is not much more forthcoming. “The River” is the album’s most immediate track—it could almost be a vintage Tricky outtake, but trip-hop is rarely as unsettling as this. Synths chatter like roosting birds and beats drop out when you least expect, throwing her words into relief against sudden silence. Lolina switches between singing and speaking modes like someone who can’t decide whether to jog or to walk, sounding sullen and playful all at once. The conflict at the center of the song—“You tell me, ‘Open your eyes’/That means I won’t”—sounds like as true a thing as she’s ever sung. Wherever this river may lead, both its origin and its destination are known only to her. –Philip Sherburne

Listen: Lolina, “The River”

Tyler, the Creator: “Okra’’

Tyler hasn’t talked his shit like this in years. Maybe he’s been too busy—launching a successful fashion line and music festival, making TV shows, and taking on the role of rap’s easy-listening radical with 2017’s Flower Boy. His deliberate empire-building across this decade almost makes you forget that he established his brand on total chaos, that he crunched down on a cockroach and staged his own hanging in the “Yonkers” video almost eight years ago. A spiritual successor to that breakout hit, “OKRA” is an unapologetically hard banger celebrating Tyler’s many wins. A blown-out bass ushers in Tyler’s crooked, Valee-nodding flow, as he rolls through an abundance of imperial lines including, “Tell Tim Chalamet to come get at me.” Consider this song a sneering reminder that the goblin is still somewhere inside him. –Matthew Strauss

Listen: Tyler, the Creator, “OKRA”

Tirzah: “Devotion’’ [ft. Coby Sey]

Tirzah sings “I just want your attention,” and time stops. When the British artist allows a line to leave her mouth, it lingers, intimate and close. On “Devotion,” desperation is felt in producer Mica Levi’s looped instrumental, elevating Tirzah’s quiet urgency with every slow-moving piano key and woozy beat of the drums. She wants it all, without exception: all the comfort, all the understanding, all the love. This is her plea, vulnerable to the point of transcendence—her aching desire to be with one other person only. –Alphonse Pierre

Listen: Tirzah, “Devotion” [ft. Coby Sey]

Helena Hauff: “Hyper-Intelligent Genetically Enriched Cyborg’’

In its dark, hypnotic call-and-response of acid squibs and synths jumping over distorted snares, “Hyper-Intelligent Genetically Enriched Cyborg” feels like a peek into the best rooms of techno’s past: the clubs of 1994 Berlin, or the industrial spaces of Cleveland in 1988. But this standout track from Helena Hauff’s excellent second album, Qualm, is rooted firmly in the present, too, down to its title subject matter: This year, pop culture has percolated with paranoia about technology, and, quietly, we’ve already seen futurism realized in gene-modified births. The techno future is here, and if we haven’t spent a lot of time questioning its fancy new tools—who has them, how they should be used—then we ought to. Hauff’s radical politics make it easy to hear this track as a sonification of the mind of such a gene-“cleansed” genius cyborg, as unmoored from humanitarian ethics as the corporations who built it. So listen warily to this siren’s warning. –Daphne Carr

Listen: Helena Hauff, “Hyper-Intelligent Genetically Enriched Cyborg”

Yves Tumor: “Noid’’

“Noid” seems to present an artist reborn: an antic experimentalist pivoting to pop in riotous fashion. But close inspection reveals Yves Tumor to be as intense as ever, with the song lurching into urgent extremes. It’s perhaps the year’s most visceral response to brutality against black bodies, refocusing the singer and producer’s dissident energy into music that involves, enraptures, and implicates.

As Tumor repeats a few biting phrases (“9-1-1, can’t trust ’em...”), time seems to stall in a heightened moment, as if violence might be imminent. The beat propelling the cinematic strings, so harried and urgent, would sooner flee than fight, and indeed seems already on its way. From there, “Noid” presents a spectacular balancing act in which paranoia threatens to snap into terror. Rarely is radical art so neatly set at the precipice of delirium. –Jazz Monroe

Listen: Yves Tumor, “Noid”

Gunna: “Sold Out Dates’’ [ft. Lil Baby]

Both Gunna and Lil Baby grew from Young Thug’s rib, but the pair’s breakout collaboration, “Sold Out Dates,” owes just as much to Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO Tour Llif3.” It’s a mission statement for overmedicated troubadours with chemical dependencies, low-level paranoia, and $20,000 in one-dollar bills. “Dates” is produced by Turbo and Ghetto Guitar and sounds like the kind of thing a grizzled country star might pull out at an after-hours club, much to the dismay of his three publicists. Gunna and Lil Baby are likely destined for different kinds of stardom—slow-and-steady and stratospheric, respectively—but “Sold Out Dates” finds them perfectly in concert. –Paul A. Thompson

Listen: Gunna, “Sold Out Dates” [ft. Lil Baby]

Slowthai: “Ladies’’

Slowthai raps like every song is his last gasp. “Ladies,” a paean to the women who shaped the UK grime MC, is no less fevered, but it’s also his most open and wholehearted song yet. Delivered over a stuttering, 8-bit beat, Slowthai’s lyrics jump from the gaps in his teeth to the promise of a yellow brick road, rattled off with a characteristically impish grin. But there’s newfound tenderness and an unexpected kind of feminism here as he raps, “I appreciate queens ’cause they made us.” It’s a quality made even more evident in the accompanying music video, where he lays naked and prostrate next to a clothed woman and later faces the camera wrapped in her arms. He’s searching for redemption and, whether he finds it or not, the excursion is exhilarating. –Eric Torres

Listen: Slowthai, “Ladies”

Pistol Annies: “Best Years of My Life’’

Heartbreak, of course, is country music’s meat and potatoes—and Pistol Annies’ Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, and Angaleena Presley can do heartbreak. “Best Years of My Life” is a deceptively simple, devastatingly intimate domestic drama about love that left with a whimper, not a bang, and the mundane narcotics (prescription opioids and brainless TV) that help numb the ache. It’s a song that feels like listening to someone’s heart slowly snuff out from lack of emotional oxygen, with a sweet, sad, spare guitar line that slowly grows louder and fuzzier. The lyrics detail a compounded sadness; we mourn for the dead relationship, yes, but more so for all the possibilities its lingering dead weight is taking the place of. There are interior epics hidden and thrumming underneath the most ordinary events in human lives, and Pistol Annies excel at revealing them. –Alison Fensterstock

Listen: Pistol Annies, “Best Years of My Life”

Kamasi Washington: “Fists of Fury’’

Los Angeles saxophonist and composer Kamasi Washington’s second album commences with a rallying cry. “Fists of Fury” is a cover version of sorts, a bold refresh of Joseph Koo & Ku Chia Hui’s blaring theme tune for the 1972 Bruce Lee film Fist of Fury. In the hands of Washington and his band, though, it becomes explicitly political: a noble call for justice and retribution that feels like a call-to-arms for the Black Lives Matter era. There is a righteous anger here, but the track itself is utterly beguiling. The arrangements invoke the rhythmic motifs of Blaxploitation funk and Latin music, massed strings adopt a honeyed swoon, and Washington and pianist Cameron Graves turn out magnificent solos that give the song’s 10 minutes a sense of perpetual lift. A feat of graceful pugilism, “Fists of Fury” floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee. –Louis Pattison

Listen: Kamasi Washington, “Fists of Fury”

Marie Davidson: “Work It’’

On the surface, “Work It” is a walloping dancefloor motivational for the secure-the-bag generation. Quebecoise singer and producer Marie Davidson weaves an elegant lattice of analog percussion—thudding kicks, dotty drums, clanging digital cowbell—before swooping in with a stern, business-bitch monologue listing the virtues of hard toil. “I don’t wanna see any fake-ass workers,” she demands. “I need real builders.” Job done? Not quite.

Considered in the context of its parent album, Working Class Woman, “Work It” emerges as part of a nuanced reflection on the psychological cost of being a touring musician—the physical and mental toll of hedonism, the stress of being your own boss. With this in mind, the song’s spoken text emerges as something more precarious: an admission of workaholism set to a runaway pulse that just can’t—or won’t—stop. It’s an important reminder of a truth that’s seldom spoken: You can still work yourself to death doing something you love. –Louis Pattison

Listen: Marie Davidson, “Work It”

Empress Of: “When I’m With Him’’

“When I’m With Him” is a Trojan horse of a song, an exuberant dance-pop banger that conceals the internal loneliness of secretly falling out of love. Like Robyn, Empress Of’s Lorely Rodriguez refracts her sorrow through assertive drums and blossoming, golden synthesizers. The track’s skipping beat and sunny production transform heartache into tantalizing melodrama. Rodriguez does this with remarkable self-awareness, acknowledging that she is repressing emotions while still attempting to articulate those tangled feelings. She sings in both Spanish and English here, and each language provides a unique cadence; the Spanish phrases in the pre-chorus tend to be more staccato, while the following English phrases flow like cursive. Like sugar added to a savory stew, the contrast enhances both sensations. –Vrinda Jagota

Listen: Empress Of, “When I’m With Him”

Lizzo: “Boys’’

In a year buoyed by auspicious hip-hop women, from Cardi B to Tierra Whack, Lizzo continues to brand herself as the no-fucks poster girl for the utopian promise of letting your freak flag fly. The classically trained Minneapolis musician’s single “Boys” is an infectious dance tribute to all things XY chromosome, topped by a saucy black-and-white video filmed in front of urinals. The song is freewheeling retro fun: The exuberant rhythm track recalls Timberlake and Timbaland’s “SexyBack,” and when was the last time you heard an old-school electric guitar solo during the bridge? Sassy to the hilt, Lizzo laundry-lists the boys who quench her thirst (“itty bitty boys, Mississippi boys”), and her declaration “Baby I don’t need you/I just want to freak you” pays homage to Missy Elliott’s combination of raunchy good-humor and sexual autonomy. Lizzo also racks up points for her inclusive approach to man crushes when she confesses: “I don’t discriminate, come and get a taste/From the playboys to the gay boys.” “Boys” ain’t rocket science, but it’s downright subversive to hear a plus-size black woman owning her sexual lust and essentially grabbing her own pussy in the face of persistent toxic masculinity. –Jason King

Listen: Lizzo, “Boys”

serpentwithfeet: “bless ur heart’’

On the chorus of “bless ur heart,” the word “heart” swells to fill a whole line. It grows eight extra syllables and as many sonic embellishments; a wall of sound that sensually mirrors the way love buoys every molecule in one’s body. The lead single from serpentwithfeet’s debut album soil, “bless ur heart” is a perfect introduction to his fantastical and fleshy style of songwriting. Vocally, there are nods to his church choir background and to his Brandy fandom—the two singers utilize a tremble to texturally convey tenderness—but it’s lyrically that serpentwithfeet really flies. In a song about a lover who taught him gentleness and inspired his writing, he imagines creatures to carry his notes deep underground, stories that grow feet, and bodies that rid themselves of rivers. That love and language can both be transformative is not a new tale, but it takes a gifted storyteller to show how snugly they dovetail. –Ruth Saxelby

Listen: serpentwithfeet, “bless ur heart”

Ariana Grande: “Sweetener’’

“Sweetener” is not subtle. “Hit it, hit it, hit it, hit it/Flip it, flip it, flip it,” Ariana Grande instructs on the chorus to her fourth album’s title track, resembling an X-rated game of Bop It. Amid the track’s svelte production—trickling percussion, cushy bass hits, a lusty and cascading synth line—Pharrell punctuates Grande’s commands with a high-pitched “sheesh!” like a steam whistle cutting through the air. It all adds up to a gleeful evocation of sensuality on an album consumed with the heady pleasures of new love.

“Sweetener” carries a tender streak, too, embracing the notion of finding the good in so much bad, and toasting to the people in one’s life who encourage such perseverance. At a Manchester tribute concert following the deadly bombing at her show there last year, Grande said, “The fact that all of those people were able to turn something that represented the most heinous of humanity into something beautiful and unifying and loving is just wild.” And “Sweetener” embodies that same look-on-the-bright-side universality—a reminder that even the worst feelings can be turned into something radiant and nourishing. –Larry Fitzmaurice

Listen: Ariana Grande, “Sweetener”

Kurt Vile: “Loading Zone’’

In the space of a few seconds, Kurt Vile blends several feel-good guitar textures on “Loading Zones.” When the opening wah-wah flourish gives way to more intricate acoustic fingerpicking, the singer-songwriter shows an ability to channel artists as different as Peter Frampton and Fleet Foxes. In the first verse, his droll voice unspools in lines of uneven length—telling a fractured, dreamlike story about an improbable small-town power broker—suggesting a sincere love for vintage talking blues. Happily, none of this weaving of popular traditions sounds forced; the song’s distractible journey is the work of a mellow, lightly perplexed narrator. By now, though, Vile’s more committed listeners likely understand the narrative haze as the work of a deceptively purposeful songwriter, one who knows exactly where he wants to lead them. –Seth Colter Walls

Listen: Kurt Vile, “Loading Zones”

Snail Mail: “Heat Wave’’

Snail Mail’s “Heat Wave” is built atop contradictions. The song begins as a delicate ballad before unleashing triumphant, devil-may-care bursts of fuzzy indie rock. All the while, Lindsey Jordan displays both a tonal brattiness appropriate of her 19 years and a worldly wisdom, as she addresses a green-eyed ex who’s decided to move on: “I hope whoever it is holds their breath around you, ’cause I know I did.” Toward the end of the song, the rhythm section quiets and Jordan introduces a bold refrain—“I’m not into sometimes”—that turns into an anthemic distillation of unrequited young love. “Heat Wave” is neither acerbic farewell nor mopey retrospective, but a clear admission of the pain of rejection, and the hope that we’ll all eventually find whatever it is we’re searching for. –Noah Yoo

Listen: Snail Mail, “Heat Wave”

Octavian: “Hands’’

How do you follow up a sleeper rap hit? That was the question faced by London MC Octavian after “Party Here” catapulted him into the mainstream (thanks to one Aubrey Drake Graham). The answer: An idiosyncratic slice of dreamy electro-R&B. “Hands” does away with anything resembling traditional song structure. Instead, twinkling synths, pitch-shifted lyric snippets, and a driving bassline are brought together in experimental, James Blake-esque interplay. In all its genre-bending oddity, “Hands” serves as a clear sign that this young artist has ambitions that go way beyond a Drake co-sign. –Will Pritchard

Listen: Octavian, “Hands”

Jeff Tweedy: “Having Been Is No Way to Be’’

Jeff Tweedy has been around long enough to know that any song he releases is a song that he'll have to live with for the rest of his life. So “Having Been Is No Way to Be,” off his memoiristic solo album WARM, sounds like he’s keeping his future self in check, crafting a surefire live staple that will force him to confront his urges and addictions night after night. The music is low-key, humble even: a loping acoustic strum; a low and sympathetic bass, like a steadying hand on his shoulder; a room-spinning guitar solo. But the lyrics are some of the most probing he’s ever written—in particular when he’s confronting the fact that some fans prefer the music he made while addicted to painkillers to the songs he wrote after he got clean: “But they’re not my friends/And if I was dead/What difference would it ever make to them?” With startling honesty, “Having Been Is No Way to Be” celebrates the fact that Tweedy gets to keep on living. –Stephen Deusner

Listen: Jeff Tweedy, “Having Been Is No Way to Be”

The 1975: “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)’’

Of the many, many insults Matty Healy served himself on the 1975’s last LP, none dug deeper than “I’ve been romanticizing heroin.” Whatever countercultural cachet opioids once held has been negated by the undignified deaths of Tom Petty and Prince, along with the suffering of guys like Danny, the physically broken gas station employee that Healy uses as a stand-in for himself on “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You).” Though it’s a dark meditation on drug use, the song could anchor a crushed-out mix if you ignore its lyrics—a decent likelihood, since it’s one of those ruthlessly efficient pop machines that merges hair metal and ’80s stadium synth-pop. But “It’s Not Living” devastates because it presents Healy—a guy who’s scrutinized every aspect of our modern existence—as someone who knows he can never satisfactorily answer the one question that tortures anyone close to an addict: Why? –Ian Cohen

Listen: The 1975, “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)”

Arctic Monkeys: “Four Out of Five’’

After a dozen years, six albums, and more success than anyone expected, Alex Turner is bragging about Yelp reviews on the damn moon. With Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino—and this track, its centerpiece, in particular—Arctic Monkeys present a ’70s rock lounge-lizard homage to future problems: What happens when we also ruin outer space with aggressive capitalism, gentrification, and information overload? It’s a scary, funny thought, and Turner, ever the deft vocalist, plays up both qualities in equal measure. His pitch-black Bowie croon shows a flash of conviction when he boasts of a four-star user review for his lunar taqueria—“And that’s unheard of!” At first, the song starts and stops in fits, like a latter-day Jack White track that can’t quite figure out if it has a rock rhythm or a rap one, before taking on a dreamy psychedelic quality. Maybe the moon’s marketing creeps are lulling listeners into a fake sense of security, which makes you wonder: Who’s vetting all these glowing reviews, anyway? –Jillian Mapes

Listen: Arctic Monkeys, “Four Out of Five”

MorMor: “Heaven’s Only Wishful’’

The debut single from Toronto’s Seth Nyquist bears all the hallmarks of a homespun indie-pop project: the sullen jangly guitars, the vacuum-sealed production, the skeletal “Billie Jean” beat that sounds like an outline for some pro drummer to embellish later on. And this is to say nothing of the open-ended yet intensely introspective lyrical confessions of a “poor boy” who’s “waiting for answers” and “hoping to find meaning” so that he can “break this feeling.” But despite its greyscale mood, “Heaven’s Only Wishful” nonetheless bottles up the thrill of a DIY producer realizing his potential in real time. While the song’s tempo never changes, the temperature certainly does: As Nyquist piles on Morse code squeals and grinding guitar solos, his understated cool gives way to unrestrained anger. “Some say/You’re the reason I feel this way,” he screams at an unspecified target in the song’s dying moments—an emotional breakthrough as dramatic and revelatory as his musical one. –Stuart Berman

Listen: MorMor, “Heaven’s Only Wishful”

BlocBoy JB: “Look Alive’’ [ft. Drake]

There’s a running joke that getting a feature from Drake is like handing him the keys to a vehicle that won’t be returned: When he hops on a young artist’s track, he can’t help but steal their shine. But BlocBoy JB’s breakout single “Look Alive” bucks this trend—not only does JB manage to hold his own throughout the song, he actually draws attention away from Drizzy. Over ominous production that mixes the lowest of piano notes with bulky bass, JB breathlessly jumps in as Drake’s verse ends, radiating confidence with rapid rushes of goofy punchlines that are as witty as they are amusing (“I’ma spray ’em, just like Febreze”). After this track, JB’s career is on a fast climb, and it’s not hard to see why. –Trey Alston

Listen: BlocBoy JB, “Look Alive” [ft. Drake]

Amen Dunes: “Miki Dora’’

Amen Dunes’ “Miki Dora” is a wave that never breaks, a cosmic surf beat that pulses for five minutes as singer-songwriter Damon McMahon’s reassuring voice and oceanic lyrics hover above the swell. All of the song’s basic information—melody, groove, texture—arrives in the first 30 seconds, a compact and transcendental good feeling. Then the small shifts keep coming: ever-widening guitar parts around the central thump, miniature drama with a vocal modulation about halfway through, a pile of stacked self-harmonies near the end alongside guitar lines that sound like they’ve been run through a warbling cassette tape. It’s a long way from the discombobulated constructions of McMahon’s earliest work nearly 10 years ago, with the haze now transmuted into a gentle glow, the sun sinking into the digital surf. –Jesse Jarnow

Listen: Amen Dunes, “Miki Dora”

Yaeji: “One More’’

Polyglot club phenom Yaeji spent 2017 offering up track after track of deep house filtered through the minimalist insouciance of modern R&B. She was strong enough to blow through electronic music’s biases and remix nightlife in her own image, all the while launching lyrical doozies like “I don’t fuck with family planning.” But the rolling bullshit of this year left her personally betrayed, frustrated with the industry, and rationally furious. So Yaeji returned this fall with “One More,” a self-made and self-released middle finger to men who expect women to do all the work. It is a mood, tossing and turning from gauzy quiet storm to Björk-y drum breaks and heartbreak, where even a quick turn towards euphoria ends up twitchy. It not only moves the body, it surely moves on. –Jesse Dorris

Listen: Yaeji, “One More”

Cardi B: “I Do’’ [ft. SZA]

Flipping a phrase commonly associated with matrimony, “I Do” drastically shifts the narrative with just three little words: “I do what I like.” The closing track from Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy, it finds the rapper taking back power in the face of hearsay—all while reaping the benefits of her self-made empire. With nods to Gucci and YSL, “I Do” can seem at times like a shopping list for Barneys, but it endures above all as a celebration of financial autonomy and sexual empowerment. Cardi and SZA stalk the foreboding beat, flexing atop skittering hi-hats and something like detuned church bells. They count out their cash and accomplishments without a scrap of shame; Cardi feels so sexually superior, she claims to shout her own name in the sack. They don’t shy away from naming their desires, but as usual, they’re not asking others to provide for them—they’ve got that part handled. –Madison Bloom

Listen: Cardi B, “I Do” [ft. SZA]

Sheck Wes: “Wanted’’

For many teenagers in New York—whose days are spent wandering through the city being ignored by adults and stalked by cops—nowhere ever really feels like home. On “Wanted,” Harlem’s Sheck Wes embodies that nomadic lifestyle as he tries to maneuver through a place where everyone just wishes he would go away, convinced he’s only up to no good. Realizing that he won’t be accepted no matter what, he opts to wreak havoc: boosting items from downtown to sell uptown and wilding on the subway, carving out some control wherever he can. It’s why Sheck Wes has become the voice of the unheard youth in NYC, and beyond. –Alphonse Pierre

Listen: Sheck Wes, “Wanted”

Sons of Kemet: “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman’’

Sons of Kemet’s “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” is a standout from a strong year for London’s burgeoning jazz scene. The song was written as an interpretation of the famed abolitionist’s initial escape from slavery via the Underground Railroad. Tubman’s bid for freedom is brought to life in an urgent, relentless, and tightly wound melee of sax, drums, and tuba; players weave in and out like those moving along a loosely defined network of routes.

The song is reflective of more contemporary times as well. Over five-and-a-half minutes, the track plumbs the UK capital’s rich, diasporic mesh of cultures: Afrobeat rhythms and freeform sax playing with an energy that resembles the golden era of pirate radio grime sets, typified by huddles of MCs passing a microphone around. Exclamatory stabs from the sax sound like reactive ad libs, and there’s a sense of unbridled joy running throughout. “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” ends as abruptly as it began, leaving pure adrenaline coursing from ear to aorta. –Will Pritchard

Listen: Sons of Kemet, “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman”

Sandro Perri: “In Another Life’’

Over a bubbling synth beat and lyrical guitar fills, Canadian singer-songwriter Sandro Perri vividly imagines a better place, one where “the seed of greed dissolved in thirst.” But by walking us step-by-step through his impossible dream, steadily unfolding one verse after another for 24 patient minutes, Perri offers an additional experience that enlivens his description of this weary utopia. This parallel existence isn’t just in our imaginations: By taking the song in and following its gentle curves, we start to become one with its rhythms, syncing with its gurgling, ceaseless flow. “In Another Life” isn’t a perfect prescription—many lines don’t make sense—but rather a space to inhabit, one that can be transformational in the right headspace. As we so often find ourselves struggling to cram in every last piece of crucial data, here is a song that has all the time in the world. –Mark Richardson

Listen: Sandro Perri, “In Another Life”

Lucy Dacus: “Night Shift’’

It’s called the graveyard shift for a reason. Night can bring terrors, but moments of lucidity can also lurk within its quiet shadows. Lucy Dacus knows this duality all too well in “Night Shift,” a strung-out swamp of feelings about a breakup and the ensuing attempts to trying to hack away at the emotional cartilage that binds you to an ex-lover. The nearly-seven-minute track portrays a person flung off her axis and haunted by specters. Its racked, exquisite agony—and teeth-gritting determination to face the future without that loser ex—marks it as one of Dacus’ greatest songs to date. After a hushed opening, the song ignites as a chugging guitar riff cedes to Dacus screaming, in a bludgeoning wail, that she’s settled for second-rate treatment for the last time. They say that you learn something, good or bad, from every relationship. Dacus’ emotional purging feels like a much-needed vomit after a night of excess. The taste lingers, but wipe your mouth and keep on walking. –Owen Myers

Listen: Lucy Dacus, “Night Shift”

Low: “Always Trying to Work It Out’’

As the two vocalists of Low, the experimental rock project they’ve helmed since the early 1990s, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker play to their differences. Sparhawk’s voice has a rough, earthy grain that makes him the perfect foil to Parker’s crystal vibrato; the contrast in texture between the two lends depth to their slow, simple arrangements. On “Always Trying to Work It Out,” from the desolate landscape of Double Negative, Parker and Sparhawk add a new element to their vocal dynamics, texturing their voices with prismatic studio effects. Each singer’s voice fractures into pitch-shifted strands; they’re harmonizing with each other, as they usually do, but they’re also singing against alternate visions of themselves over the steady chug of a bass drum. Their voices fray and unravel, sounding as if they’re just missing each other. “Always Trying to Work It Out” stands as one of the loneliest and most poignant cuts off an album consumed with the feeling of isolation. Singing to someone and not knowing if they’ll hear you can be harder than singing to no one at all. –Sasha Geffen

Listen: Low, “Always Trying to Work It Out”

Soccer Mommy: “Your Dog’’

Soccer Mommy’s Sophie Allison wastes no time stating her thesis here: “I don’t wanna be your fucking dog.” The ultimate kiss-off to unhealthy power dynamics, “Your Dog” seethes with resentment, as Allison recounts a partner’s offenses: emotional neglect, using her like a “prop,” choking her with a metaphorical collar and leash. Though her voice falters into tender, multi-tracked murmurs when she describes the forehead kisses that keep her coming back for more—mimicking the confusing cycle of forgiveness in a toxic relationship—Allison’s delivery throughout the song is determined and self-possessed. “I want a love that lets me breathe,” she exclaims as the track deteriorates into a squall of noisy guitar feedback. This isn’t a bruised confession about an emotionally manipulative ex: It’s a declaration of sovereignty. –Braudie Blais-Billie

Listen: Soccer Mommy, “Your Dog”

Empath: “The Eye’’

West Philly noise-pop quartet Empath’s best song yet is named for a phrase plucked from feminist poet Adrienne Rich: “the tear that washes out the eye.” Despite its literary origins, the reference is far from overwrought—Catherine Elicson, who sings, plays guitar, and writes for the group, tends to let intuition guide her lyrics, deciphering their meaning after the fact. Instead of overthinking things, Elicson doubles down on the pop form here, concocting an infectious hook while throwing in a few “baby”s for sexy punctuation and treating the poet’s words like decorative wallpaper. This subversion—de-escalating high art and lifting up the low—is a delicious twist that tops off the anarchic fun of “The Eye,” a hurtling three-minute endeavor in which drones collide with wind chimes and birdsong and indecipherable crew vocals tease juicy secrets. –Olivia Horn

Listen: Empath, “The Eye”

Kacey Musgraves: “High Horse’’

Of all the stinging one-liners on “High Horse,” the most revealing is when Kacey Musgraves declares, “You’re classic in the wrong way.” Musgraves, by contrast, has built a career out of being classic in the right way. The singer made her name on vintage, pedal-steel country with a fiercely contemporary perspective, and this song turns toward the dancefloor by reaching back for a sultry Bee Gees strut. And yet, “High Horse” is no nostalgia play. The sleek production sounds every bit as timely as the 2018 indie disco-pop of Mitski’s “Nobody” or U.S. Girls’ “Rosebud,” while the lyrical horseplay—this self-impressed loudmouth clearly won’t come off it, so he better just “giddy-up, giddy-up”—is a perfect chef’s kiss of a kiss-off. –Marc Hogan

Listen: Kacey Musgraves, “High Horse”

Tierra Whack: “Hungry Hippo’’

“Hungry Hippo” is a manifesto from a hip-hop chameleon. Tierra Whack tells us we’ll never get a long look at her, someone whose interior life moves so fast, we’re lucky just to hear a flash of it. The song begins with a plinking melody, like a sophisticated ice cream truck coming down the block, before Whack’s voice arrives, dripping with glamour. “He likes my diamonds and my pearls,” she sings, preening, “I said, Thank you, I designed it.” In this way, “Hungry Hippo” gets closest to Whack showing herself as the artist behind her concealing designs. It’s one of the most flirtatious reveals on Whack World, an album of one-minute songs that Whack rolls out to us like gems before quickly snatching them back. –Maggie Lange

Listen: Tierra Whack, “Hungry Hippo”

Jessica Pratt: “This Time Around’’

Like all of Jessica Pratt’s best songs, “This Time Around” puts equal emphasis on the familiar and the fadeout. It’s like a gorgeous, muffled refrain from the radio of a passing car, just brief enough to get stuck in your head but too fleeting to make out the words. Pratt’s psychedelic folk music is strikingly solitary, with little more than her vocals and guitar; it doesn’t suck the listener in so much as wave them forward, to be immersed at their own pace. It’s easy to take for granted when an artist is able to conjure such strange atmospheres with such simple sounds. While the world has gotten much louder in the three years since her last album, “This Time Around” promises her sanctuary of song remains intact—as cozy and addictively alien as ever. –Sam Sodomsky

Listen: Jessica Pratt, “This Time Around”

Rico Nasty: “Rage’’

“Rage” evokes an immersive world in which women’s anger is as thrilling as it is cathartic. Channeling her inner berserker, Rico Nasty’s prickly rasp does wonders here, puncturing producer Kenny Beats’ thick walls of crunch and bass. Like a chain mace, Rico’s flow can be nimble or dense, swinging with the beat or smashing against it. On “Rage,” every punch lands; every shriek pierces. Rico’s rage here is deft but not directionless. As she mows down biters, doubters, challengers—basically anyone in her way—she raps with cutting precision. And as Rico channels her own fury, she also shouts out the bad bitches who rage just as hard. Any schmuck can get upset; rage, Rico shows, is a commitment. –Stephen Kearse

Listen: Rico Nasty, “Rage”

Mitski: “Geyser’’

“Geyser” may depict intense, undeniable devotion, but it rejects the elation typical of love songs. On the track, Mitski doesn’t recount the specific joys of being with another person. Rather, she turns inward, singing about her desire more broadly, as a force that brews like a geyser about to erupt. Mitski has explained that “Geyser” is about her relationship to music rather than romance, about how there is a certain desperation in the music made by people who know they couldn’t possibly do anything else. This sense of passion, swirling with the gravitational pull of a whirlpool, is bigger than any one person or situation. –Vrinda Jagota

Listen: Mitski, “Geyser”

Lady Gaga / Bradley Cooper: “Shallow’’

In A Star Is Born, Lady Gaga’s character Ally sits in a grocery store parking lot with Bradley Cooper’s Jackson Maine, who inspires her to spontaneously write and sing a verse from what would become “Shallow.” Within a week, the pair are singing a full-band version of the song to a crazed live crowd (apparently, Maine telepathically learned the rest of it). The film proselytizes that kind of organic, meant-to-be songwriting over processed pop, though in real life, composing “Shallow” involved four different writers, including Mark Ronson and the guy from Miike Snow. If it takes that much work to make something sound so natural, it’s worth it: When Gaga hits her deep-throated yelp in the song’s back third, it’s a true punch-the-air moment of triumph. It sounds like something out of the movies. And then you realize it is. –Matthew Schnipper

Listen: Lady Gaga / Bradley Cooper, “Shallow”

Rae Sremmurd: “Powerglide’’ [ft. Juicy J]

On “Powerglide,” Rae Sremmurd and Juicy J assert their status as some of the most successful stars in rap by invoking all the familiar tropes: fast cars, fine jewelry, fashionable women. But while Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi are bigger than ever, some things in the Rae Sremmurd universe remain unchanged, going all the way back to their “No Flex Zone” days: Mike-WiLL made it (again), and the Mississippi duo still couldn’t care less about any of their various luxuries, warbling about the byproducts of their prosperity with blithe indifference. “I don’t care if she take all of mine, like it ain’t shit but a dollar sign,” Swae Lee proclaims at the end of the chorus. Weird flex, but OK. –Noah Yoo

Listen: Rae Sremmurd, “Powerglide” [ft. Juicy J]

Earl Sweatshirt: “December 24’’

The beat of “December 24” is woozy and warm. It has no edges. It sounds like what would happen if you tickled a Mobb Deep instrumental until it broke out giggling. It never comes into focus, no matter how you squint—if it were an eye test, you would fail it.

Earl Sweatshirt keeps things blurry on purpose throughout his album Some Rap Songs, and the decision suggests a lot of things about his worldview: False clarity is inimical to truth; metrical perfection crowds out life. He doesn’t worry about his voice syncing perfectly with the beat on this song—he just dances above it. Muffled explosions detonate in his lyrics, which reverberate with death, sickness, grief. His grandmother, eulogized on his previous albums, appears as a memory here, “on a drip drink” of morphine at the hospital. Hearts and limbs break, and Earl wonders who will help him when his own bones turn brittle. He’s 24. At that age, your bones are young, springy, quick to heal. But he sounds deeply unconvinced, as if he has intuited somewhere just how little it takes to shatter. –Jayson Greene

Listen: Earl Sweatshirt, “December 24”

Vince Staples: “FUN!’’

What stands out on “FUN!” is Vince Staples’ deliberate patience as an MC as he searches for a connective rhyme with each syllable. Even when it doesn’t work out, the attempt creates sonic pleasure. Vince is one of the best reporters working today, which is why his songs often feel like spectacular, inviting world-building. This song, which lifts its sound from the Bay Area’s hyphy scene and features E-40, is like the night after the last day of school, with nothing but warmth and endless possibilities ahead. Amid spacey and bounceable production, Vince charts the geography of a neighborhood, both at ease in it and not. There’s something special about the way he is able to unfold these spaces in a song that runs under three minutes. Nothing is wasted; everything flourishes. –Hanif Abdurraqib

Listen: Vince Staples, “FUN!”

Lana Del Rey: “Venice Bitch’’

Over the course of the last seven years, Lana Del Rey has transformed herself from a viral phenomenon to the center of her own sad-girl artistic universe. She’s not above mainstream friendly moves, but she’s also long shown a willingness to follow her Americana muse wherever it might lead. On “Venice Bitch,” she head-fakes toward the middle of the road but ends up someplace gloriously bonkers.

Lana worked on the song with Jack Antonoff, whose hits with Taylor Swift and Lorde could’ve forecast it to be streamlined Top 40 fare. Instead, “Venice Bitch” is almost 10 minutes of folk-rock introspection, as Lana mashes up decades of cultural signposts—Hallmark, a Father John Misty album name, a favorite Robert Frost line—into her own nü-Laurel Canyon epic. This is Lana doubling down on her Lana-ness: Lana squared, Lana rebooting Being John Malkovich. Perhaps she’s commenting on the supposed stability of small-town, pre-rock’n’roll living—the album “Venice Bitch” precedes is titled Norman Fucking Rockwell—amid the gentle plucks and bleary solos of rock’s post-hippie comedown. Or maybe she’s just cracking herself up. –Marc Hogan

Listen: Lana Del Rey, “Venice Bitch”

Yves Tumor: “Lifetime’’

The drums on “Lifetime” feel like being pulled under the ocean. Recalling the explosive fills of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Jimmy Chamberlin or the fluid, ecstatic musicality of Liturgy’s Greg Fox, they seem to be battering you from every angle, possibly moving in several directions at once. The little hi-hats feel like sharp gasps for air. Above and around this clattering mass of sound, Yves Tumor demonstrates how unusual a rock anthem can be. The song’s chorus soars upward with all the chest-beating angst of Bono circa “New Year’s Day,” but the words make no sense, or they make such a hyper-specific kind of sense that we are left entirely out of the equation. The only thing that is clear is we are being given a startling keyhole into a howling emotional storm. –Jayson Greene

Listen: Yves Tumor, “Lifetime”

U.S. Girls: “Rosebud’’

Whether calling out Obama for drone killings over punchy brass or depicting the reaches of the patriarchy all the way to heaven over hiccuping record scratches, U.S. Girls’ In a Poem Unlimited is an examination of the personal, political, and purely unconventional. “Rosebud” is the album’s gorgeous centerpiece, a catchy, disco-infused jaunt cut with Meg Remy’s piercing vocals. Yet the song’s shimmering background—anchored by a smooth bassline, programmed drums, and strings—is something of a ruse. Here, Remy’s lyrics are imploring and complex, making a reference to the mystery at the heart of Citizen Kane and flipping it to ask a meditative question: Who holds the key to who you are? Remy doesn’t offer up any simple answers, but she makes it clear that we sometimes need to dig deep to identify which factors—our upbringing, our partners, our friends—have molded us into who we are today. –Eric Torres

Listen: U.S. Girls, “Rosebud”

Blood Orange: “Charcoal Baby’’

The word “charcoal” conjures images of residue, used both as an exfoliate in beauty masks and as makeup for blackface. But “Charcoal Baby,” the highlight of Blood Orange’s Negro Swan, is a celebration of black skin amid its many negative connotations. The song finds both beauty and exclusion in having to permanently wear blackness, in all its otherness. “No one wants to be the odd one out at times/No one wants to be the negro swan,” Dev Hynes sighs. “Can you break sometimes?” There is no freedom from the ugliness of the world, but Hynes suggests there is some deliverance in the embrace of the unchanging. His feathery tone, met at various points by a talented and barely noticeable supporting cast, wisps between an unfastening guitar riff, washed-out synths, and shimmering keys. His delicate touch brings warmth to a place of near isolation; his cooing falsetto communicates comfort. The song—in its gorgeous, understated display of beauty—is an embrace. –Sheldon Pearce

Listen: Blood Orange, “Charcoal Baby”

Julia Holter: “I Shall Love 2’’

At the start of “I Shall Love 2,” Julia Holter is suspended in a permanent daze. “I am in love/What can I do?” she asks over rudimentary keyboards and drum machines, so distracted by this odd feeling that all she seemingly can do is sit beside a window and stare at the world outside. But suddenly, strings, horns, bass, and drums cozy up to her. “I shall love,” sings a choir, emerging from the ether. She takes up their credo, singing it without interruption or hesitation for the next two minutes, as the band morphs into a symphony. The mantra becomes her flashlight through an unknown dark, a way of navigating the unseen terror of the future. Holter doesn’t try to simplify love or the complexity it entails; she embraces its significance, letting the power lift her to a new plane of strength and clarity. It’s a hard lesson to remember on our best days—and a far more necessary one during our worst. –Grayson Haver Currin

Listen: Julia Holter, “I Shall Love 2”

Westerman: “Confirmation’’

In “Confirmation,” a balmy and left-field pop gem, Westerman puts his overactive mind on pause. With reverb-shrouded vocals that drift by like puffs of cumulus, the London songwriter radiates a near-spiritual faith in the power of art, offering mindful encouragement to move forward even when it feels impossible. That pathway is mirrored by sirens symbolizing inner tumult, which fade to make way for a bright patina of ’80s synths. Westerman’s optimistic vision is far from naïve, though. He clocks that life in a noisy world can lead to creative impasse but refuses to make that a scapegoat for inaction. (“Blame it on the establishment,” he offers as an option, before reconsidering that excuse as “so boring.”) Tethering grounded awareness with a welcome sense of escape, “Confirmation” marks the arrival of a songwriter who soothes. –Owen Myers

Listen: Westerman, “Confirmation”

Pusha-T: “The Story of Adidon’’

“You are hiding a child.” The line is so deflating, so uncouth, so petty that it’s beautiful. Pusha-T’s feud with Drake began as an outgrowth of his long-running tiffs with Lil Wayne and Baby, and there was no need for it to ever evolve further. But on “The Story of Adidon,” Pusha doesn’t just diss Drake; he diagnoses him, reading his charts slowly and sinisterly. The Drake he conjures is not just a lesser MC: he’s a sad, deadbeat hypocrite embroiled in generational dysfunction that plays out in his music, in his relationships, and on his scalp.

Though Pusha’s rapping is more rushed than usual, his writing less artful, it’s clear his energy was concentrated on staging. The song’s artwork, an image of Drake in blackface, is unforgettable. No I.D.’s beautiful production, hijacked from JAY-Z’s “The Story of O.J.,” is made caustic. Each time Nina Simone coos “My skin is black,” there’s a readymade image of Drake missing the power of that statement by a mile. Whereas JAY-Z used O.J. Simpson as a foil, Pusha holds Drake at a comic distance, turning his foe’s story into a slapstick riot that’s as cruel as it is insulting. This dissonance is the brutal brilliance of “The Story of Adidon,” and perhaps all rap beef. As Pusha chuckles in the outro—his satisfaction unabashed, the surgery complete—it’s hard not to notice all the blood on the operation table. –Stephen Kearse

Listen: Pusha-T, “The Story of Adidon”

Janelle Monáe: “Make Me Feel’’

As ever, Janelle Monáe’s image and creative vision are meticulously controlled on “Make Me Feel,” but the single ditches restraint in favor of one of the greatest subjects in music: uncontainable feelings that become uncontained over the course of a song. The crisp minimalist backdrop—which may or may not directly involve a synth by Prince—gives way to vocal and guitar outbursts, as Monáe teases “don’t make me spell it out for you” before doing exactly that with National Spelling Bee shouts. By the end, she’s ripping holes in the song, belting “I can’t help it!” and sounding utterly free.

“Make Me Feel” was co-written by prolific pop hitmakers Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter, who have been making this same sort of zipped-up funk song for about two years now (think Selena Gomez’s “Hands to Myself”). But Monáe is self-possessed enough of a performer to elevate it from its workaday beginnings to someplace joyous and potentially boundless. And in this glum, gray year for pop, it’s a relief to hear love sound so good, so fucking real. –Katherine St. Asaph

Listen: Janelle Monáe, “Make Me Feel”

Let’s Eat Grandma: “Falling Into Me’’

On paper, Let’s Eat Grandma’s “Falling Into Me” shouldn’t work. But the duo of Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton are masters of streamlining a host of strange elements to create immersive universes for their glossy pop songs. For this nearly six-minute track, they manage to blend together pounding ’80s drum fills, fingerpicked classical guitar, a sea of sawtooth synths, syncopated cowbell, and an epic saxophone solo… and somehow make it not sound like the corniest thing in the world. Instead, it emerges as a sleek track with the danceability of a Lorde song. The lyrics here describe the thrilling uncertainty of getting to know a new lover, coded in cryptic imagery, from misted backstreets and night-blooming violets to dented phone screens and handprints against windows. But in the chorus, they cast off any obliqueness and distill the feeling in just three words: “You/Me/This.” –Michelle Kim

Listen: Let’s Eat Grandma, “Falling Into Me”

Peggy Gou: “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)’’

Just two years ago, Peggy Gou dropped out of fashion school to focus full-time on music production. The Berlin-based producer’s early singles flashed a gift for balancing house, techno, and electro, and she soon became the first female Korean DJ to make a BBC Essential Mix. But with “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane),” Gou makes a quantum leap. Daydreaming about the chaotic state of the world in her native Korean, she taps into dance music’s underlying emotions. Amid acid squelches and a spot-on ’90s house beat, topped off with a dulcet vibraphone line and Gou’s own murmurs, “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)” channels those feelings of wistfulness, of finding comfort among strangers. She captures that singular dancefloor sensation of shaking off the world’s troubles and giving in to the total euphoria of the moment. –Andy Beta

Listen: Peggy Gou, “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)”

Drake: “In My Feelings’’

In May, it looked like Drake had lost the most important rap beef since Nas vs. Jay-Z. But soon after, he quieted all that noise with one of the catchiest tracks of his career. “In My Feelings” is a New Orleans bounce-indebted No. 1 hit with production from that scene’s legendary producer, BlaqNmilD, sliced-up vocals courtesy of the city’s own Lil Wayne, and a hook so effective that it scarred every person named Kiki worldwide. The contagious track also inspired the most genuinely spontaneous viral dance challenge the music industry has ever seen—one that saw grandmas making heart hands alongside moving cars. Drake went from roadkill under Pusha-T’s tire to making a song that was so good, it made people risk becoming roadkill themselves. That’s power. –Alphonse Pierre

Listen: Drake, “In My Feelings”

Beach House: “Lemon Glow’’

Somehow, Beach House were not one of the bands invited to play the Roadhouse in last year’s “Twin Peaks: The Return.” But “Lemon Glow,” with its menacing sexiness and the accompanying video’s Black Lodge wiggle, shows that the duo remains a force when it comes to building surreal mystery. The song’s coiling riff and tittering hi-hats make it sound as if Beach House have learned something from the hip-hop producers who keep sampling them. And when singer Victoria Legrand lays into the chorus—“When you turn the lights down low/Lemon-color honey glow”—it feels as if she’s goading us into deeper levels of innuendo and bemusement. “I come alive/You stay all night,” she sings, confirming what we suspected all along: “Lemon Glow” is a sex jam, albeit one more concerned with the shadows than the bodies casting them. –Andrew Gaerig

Listen: Beach House, “Lemon Glow”

Camp Cope: “The Opener’’

“The Opener” is a manifesto of survival. It’s built around the gendered criticism that has been leveled at Camp Cope during their years in Melbourne, Australia’s indie scene: that their success is just dumb luck and not the outcome of hard work, that women can’t sell out venues, that bookers often see them as a box to tick off. Mimicking a clueless promoter, songwriter and guitarist Georgia Maq seethes, “‘Yeah, just get a female opener/That’ll fill the quota.’” Despite her fury, “The Opener” never explodes into a chorus of rage. Instead, Camp Cope maintain a measured, hookless guitar-drum-bass chug throughout, their consistency emphasizing their formidable chops. The song’s only real dynamics come from Maq, whose jagged voice lands with force while still revealing a profound hurt. When she bellows, “Well, see how far we’ve come not listening to you” at the end of the song, it’s a triumphant reminder that their persistence has paid off. –Quinn Moreland

Listen: Camp Cope, “The Opener”

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: “Middle America’’

One of the most flat-out beautiful songs of Stephen Malkmus’ long career, “Middle America” derives its power from a low-key simplicity: the lovely country-rock arrangement, the pendulum rhythm of Joanna Bolme’s bassline, Malkmus’ disarmingly tender falsetto, that perfect rhyme of “You know you should be blushin’” with “to a hue of Robitussin.” For a guy who’s too often held up as the aging avatar of ’90s indie-rock irony, Malkmus doesn’t sound detached or desperate, but rather warm and wise on this wistful meditation about responsibility. –Stephen Deusner

Listen: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, “Middle America”

Cardi B: “I Like It” [ft. Bad Bunny and J Balvin]

Cardi B’s debut album, Invasion of Privacy, would not have been complete without a nod to her Latin roots. At the urging of her label head, Atlantic’s Craig Kallman, she began what would become a seven-month writing process for “I Like It” last fall. They started with two samples from Kallman’s vinyl collection—Latin boogaloo bandleader Pete Rodriguez’s “I Like It Like That” and “Oh That’s Nice”—and created the rapper’s second No. 1 single.

It’s pretty hard to hate a song this animated, but the appeal of “I Like It” goes beyond the power of positivity. From the opening drift of horns to the bodying waves of bass, this Latin trap cut is a carefully calibrated burst of energy. Its charismatic MCs—Cardi alongside the reggaeton stars Bad Bunny and J Balvin—achieve the perfect balance: She flows and flexes effortlessly, Bunny goes hard, and Balvin exudes suaveness. Of the singles released from Invasion of Privacy, “I Like It” is the most expansive in sound and color—no small feat from one of hip-hop’s boldest talents this year. –Trey Alston

Listen: Cardi B, “I Like It” [ft. Bad Bunny and J Balvin]

SOPHIE: “Is It Cold In the Water?”

“Is It Cold in the Water?” is appropriately titled: There’s an aqueous chill in the song’s shifting electronic undertows. As the grandiose centerpiece of SOPHIE’s debut album OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES, the song vacillates between rave-gnarled electronics and shimmering pop emotion. The devastating impact of this combination is magnified by the track’s sense of mystery: The lyrics paint an impressionistic picture of anguished resistance, while guest vocalist Cecile Believe’s articulated strength absorbs the listener’s own fears. In a year of blowhard and bluster, “Is It Cold in the Water?” showed strength in ambiguity, its glacial charm an icy dagger to the heart of pop music. –Ben Cardew

Listen: SOPHIE, “Is It Cold in the Water?”

Christine and the Queens: “5 dollars”

The handful of great singles about sex work have made their characters sound pitiful. “5 dollars” does something different. Through transactional physicality, the solicitor and solicited in Héloïse Letissier’s story get to revel in their instincts, freed from harsh gazes and self-loathing—to steal a line from Lou Reed, they experience how it would feel to be James Dean for a day. Letissier galvanizes such heroic outcasts in an air-punching chorus that makes these archetypes gleam anew: She is Springsteen on the sidelines cheering on her cracked antiheroes, the all-American imagery of five-dollar spoils and implied blue collars lending a classic pop-art touch. How long her characters’ sense of transcendence lasts is uncertain: You won’t get far on five dollars. But that small sum contains infinite potential. –Laura Snapes

Listen: Christine and the Queens, “5 dollars”

Moses Sumney: “Rank & File”

Moses Sumney’s falsetto is so otherworldly, it usually lends him an air of repose—like a narrator working from a sky-high vantage point. But on “Rank & File,” he burrows himself in the mud and despair of our moment, brooding in a deeper register that only exacerbates his dripping venom. The closing track from his Black in Deep Red, 2014 EP, “Rank & File” inverts a ubiquitous chant of the armed forces—“I don’t know but I’ve been told”—into an excoriation of police brutality. A finger-snapped, martial beat mimics the implacable passage of time, while listless, numerical chanting adds to an overwhelming aura of surveillance and groupthink. Sumney pushes back against the complacency, hissing at the bloody forces threatening the black community. When he finally unsheathes his angelic upper register, it’s in wails of anguish, and it cuts to the marrow. –Stacey Anderson

Listen: Moses Sumney, “Rank & File”

Travis Scott: “Sicko Mode” [ ft. Drake]

In a year spent getting mad online, it was nice to see people experience some joy, too. “Let’s fucking focus!” bellowed hip-hop podcaster DJ Akademiks on a livestream upon first hearing Drake on “Sicko Mode,” literally jumping out of his chair for a guest appearance from the most ubiquitous artist in popular music right now. His drunken overreaction was beautiful in its pure outlandishness—characteristics that can be applied to Travis Scott and to “Sicko Mode” as a whole.

Scott’s music has always possessed a Frankenstein-like, stitched-together build, but the multi-part “Sicko Mode” goes to hilariously operatic new heights. The proggiest hip-hop song to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts this year, it’s essentially Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” for future ComplexCon attendees, lurching through rubbery bass lines and haunted-house organs courtesy of a small army of trending rap producers. Scott namechecks Bonnaroo and Uncle Luke in the same breath, Drake delivers his best verse of the year while talking about sleeping on a plane, and both join forces to repeat the phrase “like a light” enough times to potentially short-circuit a metropolitan power grid. “Sicko Mode” is a sonic embarrassment of riches that’s well worth embarrassing yourself online for. –Larry Fitzmaurice

Listen: Travis Scott, “Sicko Mode” [ft. Drake]

Ella Mai: “Boo’d Up”

Originally released in the winter of 2017, Ella Mai’s “Boo’d Up” finally graduated to radio hit status in the summer of 2018, as if it needed a heat index that matched its own weather to truly unfurl. The song is a long shimmer of R&B, its synths woven into a cloud of moisture trembling in the air. DJ Mustard’s production, transmitted from somewhere far beyond the aerobic snap of his previous hits, is so relaxed it sounds gradually exhaled. Mai’s voice is remarkably steady and focused, but the words she sings constantly sink into vulnerability. It is this vision of desire as a truly bottomless feeling that makes “Boo’d Up” feel special, like a modern day version of Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the Rapture.” The song’s chorus—“Ba-dum, boo’d up”—simulates the quickened thrum of Mai’s heartbeat, as if it were trying to speak to her, echoing distantly from the depth to which she’s fallen in love. –Brad Nelson

Listen: Ella Mai, “Boo’d Up”

Troye Sivan: “My My My!”

“My My My!” possesses no more and no less than what all great pop moments need: push-and-pull lyrics about love and sex, the rush of a massive chorus that feels instantly familiar, and, most of all, the aura of a performer with undeniable charm. The fact that Troye Sivan is gay—a frustrating novelty in a genre that relies on gay dollars but does not always reward gay talent—both matters and doesn’t. Yes, it is refreshing to imagine the song as a story of infatuation between two men. But the entire point of “My My My!” seems to be about pop’s thrilling, almost old-fashioned power to appeal to anyone and everyone. –Alex Frank

Listen: Troye Sivan, “My My My!”

Lonnie Holley: “I Woke Up in a Fucked-Up America”

Every era has its prophets, and Lonnie Holley—a 68-year-old sculptor from Birmingham, Alabama, who began releasing experimental music in 2012—speaks to the anguish and tumult of modern life with extraordinary fury and perception. A version of “I Woke Up in a Fucked-Up America” has been a part of Holley’s mind-bending live set for awhile; when he performs it, the song expands and contracts in mesmerizing ways. Is it noise? Is it pop? All that’s ever truly clear is that the song is a dissonant, wounded lament for a nation under duress. It ends with an imploration: “Please, please, please/Go/Let me out of this dream.” Holley’s throaty vocals—evoking Louis Armstrong, Stevie Wonder, and Tom Waits—and his bandmates’ spaced-out clanking combine to make a gorgeous racket, while the song’s lyrics address feelings of confusion and deep disappointment. This is what it sounds like when you know the ground below your feet has been compromised. –Amanda Petrusich

Listen: Lonnie Holley, “I Woke Up in a Fucked-Up America”

Robyn: “Missing You”

Missing someone is a universal human experience. Everyone from newborns to centenarians knows what it feels like to stare into the abyss of “this empty space you left behind,” as Robyn sings here. But only Robyn could take that abyss and make it this kind of dance party. Arpeggiated notes glisten like sunlight on teardrops, while the pulsing undercurrent propels forward motion, out of grief and into healing. As in the most classic of pop songs, the “you” she’s addressing is whoever you want it to be; this is a song that could be played at a wake, a high school graduation party, or on a boombox outside of a lost love’s window. –Amy Phillips

Listen: Robyn, “Missing U”

Valee: “Womp Womp” [ft. Jeremih]

Valee raps like nothing is at stake. The world is his oyster, and if there’s no pearl inside, he’d probably like it served to him Rockefeller. He’s leisure-obsessive, a connoisseur of the finer things and the pleasures they bring him. His raps are about how he already has everything, and he puts that same premium on the freedoms afforded to those with nothing but downtime. “Womp Womp,” his off-kilter collaboration with Jeremih, embodies this attitude—so much so that Valee freestyled his verse. The song, which turns a long-running Peanuts joke into flex fodder, communicates supreme comfort without resplendence. It suggests that this pair is so used to people telling them what they want to hear that they aren’t even listening anymore—and they’ve faced no consequences for it. It’s rap showboating that’s masterful in its subtlety. This isn’t recreation; it’s lazing. –Sheldon Pearce

Listen: Valee, “Womp Womp” [ft. Jeremih]

Noname: “Self”

As the introduction to Noname’s magnificent second album, Room 25, “Self” establishes the lyrical sophistication and vocal flexibility the rapper practiced in Chicago’s spoken word community. She sets her smooth flow over a soulful bed of humming vocals, letting her inflections sting with light, tangy acidity. She unfurls stylish social critique that carries a smacking aftertaste between some perfect lines (the most perfect: “My pussy wrote a thesis on colonialism”). She is a tough judge, both of herself and the people who underestimate her. But there’s nothing knee-jerk in these critiques, and “Self” is awash with a pastel glow and beaming confidence. It’s the fantasy fulfillment of going back in time and flawlessly responding to someone who brushed you off. And sometimes that just means telling them what your pussy wrote. –Maggie Lange

Listen: Noname, “Self”

boygenius: “Me & My Dog”

“Me & My Dog” presents the complete arc of a doomed romance: dreamy beginnings, hazy disintegration, urgent end. The song begins with Phoebe Bridgers recalling a wonderfully imperfect date over a gently crescendoing guitar. But as the strumming grows louder, her blithe infatuation begins to cool, and insecurities arise. In a crushing moment of self-doubt, Bridgers is bolstered by the voices of her bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, and “Me & My Dog” suddenly transforms into a massive affirmation of autonomy. By the final refrain, Bridgers’ agitation reaches a breaking point and she unleashes a desire to “be emaciated”—a violent declaration that is less about becoming smaller than it is a desperate need to sever a toxic tie. She immediately counters it with a comforting fantasy: “I wish I was on a spaceship/Just me and my dog and an impossible view.” As boygenius harmonize around this escapist dream, they cling to the notion that, together, they can conquer all. –Quinn Moreland

Listen: boygenius, “Me & My Dog”

Kacey Musgraves: “Slow Burn”

The sonic departures on country star Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour are the gentle sort: playful explorations of disco and sunny, string-spangled pop, a fresh and guileless intimacy twining her words together. An acid trip served as the album’s conceptual genesis, and “Slow Burn,” its opening track, unfurls appropriately, with the eye-widening feeling of something new coming on. A plain, solo strummed guitar is joined by sparkly banjo notes low in the mix; effects slowly layer, with more instruments joining in. Atop this, Musgraves’ lyrics grow more expansive, turning from inward rumination to mind-expanded macro-philosophy about how to move through the world. “Whatever feels good,” she sings, and suddenly there are violins and reverb. It sounds like she’s tuned into a psychedelic zen frequency, a blissful calm. –Alison Fensterstock

Listen: Kacey Musgraves, “Slow Burn”

CupcakKe: “Duck Duck Goose”

Chicago rapper CupcakKe does not hold back. At all. “I thought I came but I peed on the dick,” goes the opening line of “Duck Duck Goose,” setting the sexed-up, spit-take tone. But as producer Def Starz’s horny, neon beat throbs forward, something magical happens: The language turns surreal and downright violent—clothing is torn, members are severed—and, abruptly, CupcakKe’s energy becomes less stand-up comic and more triathlon winner. As she raps faster and with more musicality, the song turns into a virtuosic display of momentum, focus, and precision. In the final seconds, just for kicks, she drops an entirely new hook: “Vending machine/Vending machine/Can’t eat it till there’s money between.” It’s the type of mantra a lesser writer might center an entire song on. For CupcakKe, though, it’s just one brush stroke in her masterpiece of Pornhub pointillism. –Sam Sodomsky

Listen: CupcakKe, “Duck Duck Goose”

Mitski: “Nobody”

Mitski is a connoisseur of surfaces. She knows exactly how to polish them until they are bright, placing the fine bone china on the side tables, making sure all the dinner forks are in order. She also knows how perfectly smooth surfaces betray us, how we can summon an earthquake of emotion to send all the pieces crashing to the floor. This clash—preternatural composure shattered by elemental feeling—is at the heart of her astonishing album Be the Cowboy, and “Nobody” is its jagged peak, a convulsion of despair executed with the neatness of a triple axel.

The song comes out sashaying, with genteel piano voicings and bachelor-pad disco flourishes. But once the words resolve into the foreground, “Nobody” becomes a gasp of loneliness so pure it hurts your lungs to breathe it in; no song broke through the year with the immediacy and desperation of “I’ve been big and small and big and small and big and small again/And still nobody wants me.” It is the sort of bald confession that clears a room, that makes people fear your misfortune to be some kind of contagion. But “Nobody” offers it with jazz hands, and in one final flourish, signs off with the two most dazzling musical modulations of the year. Coming across the song this year was like chancing upon someone’s emotional meltdown on Facebook, marked off by posts about dogs and ads for backpacks—it felt like all the worst and most exhilarating parts of 2018 compressed into a diamond. –Jayson Greene

Listen: Mitski, “Nobody”

Ariana Grande: “thank u, next”

It’s been an up-and-down year for Ariana Grande, to put it mildly. She cemented her status as a member of pop’s elite with the release of Sweetener, an album that bucked prevailing pop trends and addressed anxiety and trauma with transparency and grace; within two months, she’d lose an ex-boyfriend to a tragic overdose and call off a whirlwind engagement, all in the harsh light of the public eye. No one would have blamed her for weathering the storm in solitude or decamping to the nearest private island. Instead, she channeled her life’s spectacle into “thank u, next,” a radical display of empathy that has become her biggest hit to date.

With its soft, dreamy keys and buttery vocals, the song further refines Grande’s brand of ’90s-leaning pop-R&B. It’s a surprisingly comforting smash, one that lands in your system like a melatonin tablet and a mug of tea. And yet the song’s cultural omnipresence has more to do with the woman at its center than any particular sound. Instead of blaming the men in her life for the pain she’s endured, she thanks them for helping her become the woman she is today. In doing so, she takes the self-love that made Sweetener so special and extends it beyond herself, demonstrating optimism and compassion on the largest possible stage. –Jamieson Cox

Listen: Ariana Grande, “thank u, next”

Lil Uzi Vert: “New Patek”

On June 16, Lil Uzi Vert posted a brief video of himself shimmying, gyrating, posing, and pantomiming to a new song on Instagram—whetting fans’ appetite for a track that would not drop for another three months. When it did, “New Patek” immediately shot to the top of streaming charts. Never have we witnessed a snippet be so effective. Uzi, noted for his stylistic innovation as an emo and pop punk-inflected rapper, had now innovated in the realm of music marketing, too.

Though the teaser was bite-size, the song itself is anything but brief. Clocking in at nearly six minutes, its length is justified by Uzi’s breathless vocal performance. We get every bit of what makes Uzi a superstar: the Philly-bred rapid-fire flow, his trademark sass and arrogance, a metaphor about being a jewelry-wearing octopus, “Naruto” references, and some half-sung vocals for good measure. The Dolan Beats-produced instrumental turns a sample from an anime soundtrack into a shimmering backdrop for Uzi to get absurd. Who could have predicted that the drawn-out final version of the song would be as rewindable as the preview? –Timmhotep Aku

Listen: Lil Uzi Vert, “New Patek”

Snail Mail: “Pristine”

“Pristine” begins as a humble indie-rock song before it blooms, brimming with the rawest feelings of youth. In just under five minutes, Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan chronicles the moment when innocence begins to turn into something else—the late-teens shift from feeling endlessly confident to seeing just how overwhelming emotions can really be. “Is there any better feeling than coming clean?” the 19-year-old sings, and it sounds like a great epiphany. Miraculously, Jordan embodies the clarity and ambition she sings of: “Pristine” has a scrappy spirit as well as polish, with a move towards virtuosity—she really sings—that is rare in indie rock. “Pristine” carries hope; it feels genuinely new. –Jenn Pelly

Listen: Snail Mail, “Pristine”

DJ Koze: “Pick Up”

Two chords and the perfect bassline can propel any party into the stratosphere. But DJ Koze doesn’t give it up from the jump. Instead, he begins with the ghostly outline of a rhythm. Then, a crystalline Gladys Knight sample peals above the noise, clear and cold. “It’s sad to think/I guess neither one of us,” she sings, “Wants to be the first to say goodbye.” The fuzz dissipates, and sweeping strings come into stark relief. Liftoff.

“Pick Up” is a love letter to house music. For years, the track was a live staple for Koze, a genre agnostic who’s dedicated his career to cultivating vast knowledge of music and serving it up to audiences around the globe. What began life as a simple disco edit, built for live performance, revealed itself to be a testament to the power of the perfect loop, a dancefloor catalyst that Daft Punk or Chic could recognize and admire. Its pair of elemental, diametrically opposed samples—Knight’s melancholic voice alongside an uptempo break from onetime R&B hitmaker Melba Moore—blend together atop perfectly sequenced drums. “Pick Up” is a capsule of Koze’s musical mission: subtle reconfiguration of history in the quest of summoning bliss. –Noah Yoo

Listen: DJ Koze, “Pick Up”

Drake: “Nice for What”

Ten years ago, Drake became a star with “Best I Ever Had,” in which he told a certain someone that she didn’t need to squeeze into a tight outfit and layer her face with makeup to look good. Amid a pop landscape swimming in misogyny, it sounded kind of sweet. But then, in the song’s Kanye West-directed video, Drake played coach to a basketball team of women with cartoonish curves and short-shorts, imploring them to “take that D!” and revealing his progressivism to be little more than a scam. But that was then. Drake’s latest ode to the opposite sex, “Nice for What,” is more believable.

The song heavily samples Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor,” a wrenching lament about manipulators who take their loyal partners for granted, as Drake rolls out verses that essentially tell women that they don’t need a guy like Drake at all. “That’s a real one in your reflection/Without a follow, without a mention,” he raps over a beat powered by New Orleans’ signature bounce style, offering a pep talk to independent women worldwide. In the video, helmed by young filmmaker Karena Evans, Drake is barely seen. Instead, famous and powerful women like Issa Rae and Yara Shahidi lead board meetings, study for college, and levitate. Is it all just pandering to the #empowerment era? Maybe. But the fact that one of the most self-possessed pop stars of our time is flipping the mirror away from himself feels like a victory in itself. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Drake, “Nice for What”

Rosalía: “Malamente (Cap.1: Augurio)”

El Mal Querer, the second album from the Catalan singer Rosalía, is based loosely on an anonymous 13th Century Occitan poem about the psychic perils of jealousy, and what happens when love curdles into something uglier: panic about losing love. The single “Malamente” (the title roughly translates to “Badly”) mixes traditional flamenco rhythms with elements of pop, reggaeton, hip-hop, and R&B to create a sparse, pulsing hybrid. With this song, Rosalía somehow turns flamenco—which usually feels warm, flushed—into something chilling.

The most transfixing thing about “Malamente” is her rich, fretful vocal; the song’s lyrics, sung in Spanish, are spooky, foreboding, dark. This is the sound, Rosalía seems to suggest, of love going wrong, and fast. She narrates a cascading series of bad portents: a broken crystal, a voice on the stairs, a gypsy, a dream about a bridge. Eventually, she comes to understand what’s at stake, and how important it is to get free: “I won’t waste even a minute on thinking about you again,” she promises. –Amanda Petrusich

Listen: Rosalía, “Malamente (Cap. 1: Augurio)”

Robyn: “Honey”

Robyn’s “Honey” was a myth before it ever truly existed. When an early version of the song aired during an episode of “Girls” last year, the Swedish pop star’s fans were left to imagine what the finished track would sound like; many expressed this via the playful online plea #ReleaseHoneyDammit. Later, Robyn said she’d worked on “Honey” longer than any other song she’d written. All this anticipation threatened to create unrealistic expectations for the track before it was even released.

Instead, it turned out anticipation was the point all along. The title track from Robyn’s first solo album in eight years builds up so serenely, it snaps almost imperceptibly into focus. Drizzled in synth, pulsing like a heartbeat, “Honey” is where pop’s lovelorn dancefloor queen delivers ecstasy merely by promising it. The song overwhelms with glittery intimacy but keeps its own secrets. There’s a profound pleasure in hearing Robyn beckon, “You’re not gonna get what you need/Baby, I have what you want/Come get your honey.” With “Honey,” Robyn showed that pop, like real love, could be all about shared trust. –Marc Hogan

Listen: Robyn, “Honey”

The 1975: “Love It If We Made It”

The 1975 were polarizing from the start. Revisit one of their sleazily winking early videos or just read the long-winded title of their last album out loud, and it’s not hard to understand why. In the clip for their 2016 single “The Sound,” the Manchester pop quartet satirized their detractors, performing in a glass box while spectators grew bored outside of it, their critiques flashing onto the screen in big letters: “PRETENTIOUS. UNIMAGINATIVE. ANNOYING.” A sign of how the world has caught up with their relentless energy, “Love It If We Made It” turns the tables: Now we’re all in the glass box, and they’re defining us.

Setting a whole feed’s worth of headlines, catastrophes, and memes to an industrial new wave rave-up, “Love It If We Made It” is the type of sing-along retrospective usually best left to award show montages and “SNL” season finales. It addresses police brutality, the prison industrial complex, the opioid crisis, and much more, as frontman and lyricist Matty Healy offers epitaphs both sweeping (“Modernity has failed us”) and specific (“Rest in peace Lil Peep”). With an anxious arrangement inspired by Scottish cult band the Blue Nile, the song connects culture and counterculture, internet and real life, past and present in a way that feels miraculously, temporarily united. Even when the words read like a list of jumbled trending topics—“Fossil fueling, masturbation, immigration, liberal kitsch, kneeling on a pitch”—the band’s urgency binds it together. Unpacking every reference becomes less entertaining than just standing back and watching the fireworks, as one headline explodes into the next.

The beauty of “Love It If We Made It” is its fluidity, its weightlessness. It’s the sound of a band alternately thrashing against the world and rising above it. In the vocal performance of his young career, Healy sighs, growls, and screams, sounding just as helpless as any of us, raising questions only to watch them get buried by a thousand more. Few bands could have attempted something so audacious and made it sound so moving—a prolonged moment of desperate eye contact, shaped into a generational anthem. –Sam Sodomsky

Listen: The 1975, “Love It If We Made It”