| 100 - 81 || 80 - 61 || 60 - 41 || 40 - 21 || 20 - 1 |
| All 100 Songs |
80. Nilufer Yanya “Baby Luv” / Phoebe Bridgers “Motion Sickness”
79. Kash Doll "Here I Go"
This is here because of TikTok. Duh.
78. Robyn “Human Being”
77. Satan’s Satyrs “Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby”
If only it were 1991 again -- back when it was common for The Black Crowes' cover of Otis Redding's "Hard To Handle" and Ugly Kid Joe's "I Hate Everything About You" commonly bumped on MTV and Z100 transitioning in and out of jams from the likes of Janet Jackson and MC Hammer. (We're assuming Top 40 stations used to play "Once Bitten Twice Shy" in the late '80s, but that was before our time.) This long forgotten sub-subgenre is what Satan's Satyrs has sonically achieved with their update on a '50s R&B standard. Needless to say, we're all for it. It's hilarious and a lot more fun than it has any right to be. And it should never have disappeared in the first place. Why was there only one of these in 2018? We need more.76. Night Birds “My Dad Is The BTK”
Yeah sure, and my landlord is John Wayne Gacy.
75. Rosalia “Pienso En Tu Mira”
74. Courtney Barnett “Need a Little Time”
"I'm Obama and I say we turn this shit the fuck up." - Barack Obama, closing his eyes, nodding on the downbeats
73. Terminator 2 “Negative Reinforcement”
Terminator 2 is back??? We wish. The Dallas two-piece recorded this enormously brutal jam in 2014-2015, keeping it unreleased until mid-2018. It's huge though.
72. Mariah Carey “Caution”
71. Natalie Prass “Short Court Style”
70. Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats “I See Through You”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfKBfq75_7E
69. Freddie Gibbs f/ 03 Greedo “Death Row”
68. Andrew WK “Music Is Worth Living For”
67. Ovlov “Short Morgan” / Ovlov "Baby Alligator"
66. Thingy “Not to Follow” / Goblin Cock "Hammond Song"
Mad respect to Rob Crow for even considering the immense creative challenge tackled through his 2018 Joyful Noise residency. But also respect is due for welcoming the breakneck release schedule as an opportunity to revisit Optiganally Yours and Thingy, two bands who hadn't released any new music since 2000. As far as we can tell, neither of these bands had ever split up, but the enormous success of Pinback (originally intended a a side project) resulted in the unexpected stretch between releases. We have not yet heard the entire box, but a random sampling indicates a lack of throwaways, performed entirely to precision, meticulously recorded and mixed, carefully sequenced -- especially Anal Trump's outstanding The First 100 Songs LP.Goblin Cock's curious all-covers entry marks a sonic departure from the group's previous releases. A loud, demonic, and refreshingly cloaked version of The Monkees' "Porpoise Song" obscures its psychedelic affiliation. Our personal highlight goes to an exciting thrash take of The Roches' "Hammond Song." We're not sure why we chose "Not To Follow" as the Thingy stand-out, but it's definitely a strong one-song representation of their record as a whole.
"Not To Follow" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBtxTVXeQog&t=497s
"Hammond Song" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tM65kpHzz0
65. Connan Mockasin “Charlotte’s Thong”
64. Flasher “Material”
63. Hailu Mergia “Lala Belu”
62. Red Velvet “Bad Boy”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_CFBjAyPWE
61. Kacey Musgraves “Lonely Weekend”
"Slow Burn" is fine, but we don't really get why it turned into the critical favorite of this record. Same goes for "Rainbow" -- a very strange choice for the post-Grammy-hype radio single. "Butterflies" and "Space Cowboy" were also fine choices for album previews. But all of the above don't feel hooky enough to stand-out within pop-country radio. (Modern country fans still listen to old-fashioned regular-ass radio, by the way.) "Lonely Weekend" and "High Horse" are clearly the two songs that are easiest to remember after one listen. They are the obvious pop hits, and should have been treated as such. Another enormous blunder in the world of modern radio programming, further proof that "the biz" collectively has no idea what the fuck they are doing. | 100 - 81 || 80 - 61 || 60 - 41 || 40 - 21 || 20 - 1 |
| All 100 Songs |
Despite its designation as a frustratingly unexciting era for music and pop culture, August 2008 retroactively revealed some buried hints suggesting a desire to move young people away from the mid-2000s' sickening obsession with extravagant materialism. It's the month Kim Petras turned 16. It's also when MTV aired its last four episodes of My Super Sweet 16 in a block that included birthday celebrations for teen millionaires like Bow Wow and Sean Kingston. The stock market crashed just a few short weeks later. "I Kissed A Girl" was the biggest hit of the moment and marked a then-pinnacle of chart success for Dr. Luke, the song's ultimately despised writer and producer. We were reluctant to include "I Don't Want It At All" in our list due to Luke's involvement, but plainly stated: We really care about Kim Petras. We want Kim to blow up. She got what she needed out of that era and realizes she's ready to move onto bigger and better things. Looking back, the song structure itself is fascinatingly flawed, exposing elements that went into the process hit-creators relied upon throughout the "party like a rockstar" era. Everything about this is tongue-in-cheek. Fuck capitalism. 
After an abbreviated version of "Landing Safely" appeared on the 
As Iggy Pop and Josh Homme pump "Smoko" on the reg, its "huge hit" status also earned The Chats a daunting grind: Their giant world tour now extends through the end of November, selling out medium-sized US venues in NYC and elsewhere. Seeming barely 21 in their no-budget viral videos, we would wager they'll never become self-aware before splitting up. They have another 2-3 years of youthful dgaf stored up, alleviating concerns for any future blandness traps. (Have they released any full length LPs yet? Will they ever?) We'd expect nothing less from a Bandcamp handle like 
Lizzo's busy thinkin' 'bout boys boys boys. So many kinds. Where do we start? We like them dumb and we like them smart. We like the ones with the pretty eyes. Well we like all kinds of guys. Two of those boys just might be Pharrell and Prince, who once upon a time slid suspiciously similar grooves under Kelis and Vanity 6 respectively. Wikipedia reveals Wallpaper handled production; 2012 was the last time we wrote about Wallpaper, when he appeared somewhere around #6 on our worst songs of 2012, mostly thanks to its lyrics. In "Boys," Lizzo's energy and charisma wipe away the vomit-flavored chuckle gummy and mixes in a tightly secret recipe for batches and cookies. TikTok trending status = Currently very strong.
Many of our favorite bands put out their 2nd best albums in 2018, and we're pretty sure all of these were the best since the breakthroughs that won us over in the first place. We knew No Age had to release at least one more classic record before the end of the decade, and Snares Like a Haircut delivered on our hopes. "Send Me" exemplifies a send-off for the decade, capping an era of indie-punk that feels ready to move forward.
One early take from "Muddy Waters" derived from its mysteriously unattributed 2nd vocalist. Why is the promo video's guest singer different from the live videos? Was she unable to get time-off for tour? After some digging and discussion, we learned that the band might locate one or two volunteer on-stage participants to fill-in this crucial guest verse and chorus, originally sung by someone who is not a full time band member. Jocko has toured on-and-off since this album's digital release (about a year ago), and we are jealous of anyone who gets to see them. Physical release came out in 2019, so we will likely use this as loophole for "Albums of the year" come January. The music video prominently features hockey and hackeysack, and (again) we will figure out a way to include it in "Best Videos of 2019" even though it came out in December 2017 because we no longer care about accurate chronology.
The greatest disco-country song of the decade from an album that literally won the Grammy for "Album Of The Year" has yet to receive any spins from iHeart's CHR format. Pop is burning down from the inside out and no one with any substantial power to generate a shift is doing anything to stop it. "High Horse" never charted, and it's capitalism's fault. Pop exposure and promotion has never experienced a more devistatingly flawed era, and it will be a VERY long time before we recover. "Things are different now" is not a good enough reason to repeatedly point the finger at those who don't give a fuck about Imagine Dragons. "If you don't like it, then you're too old." Sorry, but that's not how it works.
We remember a few dumbasses on Twitter circa November 2016 trying their best to find a silver lining by predicting a 4-year punk rock renaissance. We're not sure if this is what those people meant, but our lives have not been quite the same since crossing paths with the year's most ignorant jam. "Hackin' Of Da Mindz" was our introduction to Boston's 
In these sad times, bad music bloggers tend to avoid actual descriptions of sound in favor of lyrical analysis and irrelevant narratives. With under 48 hours to process "Thank U, Next," initial takes barely scratched the surface, unsurprisingly incapable of divorcing the song from Ariana's public life, thereby perpetuating even more poptimist celebrations of the ephemeral. 
Now that TikTok is the only true remaining hit-maker of the moment, "Womp Womp," also known as "Wamp Wamp" and "Sad Trombone," could live beyond its onomatopoeic definition, typically mimicked from a human mouth to indicate failures ranging from small to not-so-small. The Price Is Right might be the home of the all time classic Womp Womp, best exemplified by instances when both contestants overbid during the final showcase showdown, indicating an enormous trombone-flavored fail. In "Womp Womp," Valee sings about watching one such episode of The Price Is Right at home during a snow day. Radio should stop avoiding the true hits. Millions of kids sang this extremely fun song that still isn't getting any radio airplay. What does this tell us? Oh wait, we know. It means that iHeartRadio is racist. 
On a personal note, this is the first time in over half-a-decade that our #1 comes from any act marginally resembling a rock band. The last time this happened was our embarrassing 2012 blunder awarding the honor to Japandroids' "The Nights Of Wine and Roses" (beating many of our future