| 100 - 81 || 80 - 61 || 60 - 41 || 40 - 21 || 20 - 1 |
| All 100 Songs |
There were once many fish in the sea of record labels. Between the early '60s and the early '00s, lots of hits charted year after year. Among the career artists, there were these things called "one hit wonders" where an artist or band would chart only once with their signature song. These existed alongside "one album wonders," a slightly longer event when an artist or band would ride a wave of chart-hit momentum that lasted roughly one-and-a-half album cycles. And throughout this span of history, one hit wonders and one album wonders could co-exist alongside career artists, generating an excitingly varied rotation of radio formats that prominently featured new music, i.e. Top 40, hiphop, and modern rock.
Today, the only remaining fish in the sea are Sony, Warner, and Universal. These are the big ones who consumed or crushed the smaller fishies. Consolidation has no use for "one hit" or "one album." Radio consolidation complies by staying in their lane, never deviating for sounds that veer outside the incessantly vanilla stream. This machine maintains 100% control over painfully slow moving chart rotation and rejection of anything even slightly edgy. It's this structure that purposely prevents another Beatles- or Nirvana-moment from happening ever again, in favor of Billboard's myriad record-breaking streaks that typically define eras with the least mainstream spontaneity or creativity.
The three labels also love that "OK boomer" can so effectively dismiss anyone questioning the status quo. Are you negatively critiquing something new? You must be old and out of touch.
Consider that fans of new music actually want to enjoy new stuff. No one becomes a hater by choice. Only a masochist would turn on the radio in hopes of discovering something they hate. Music fans crave new sounds. They want excitement and fun to return to the worlds of charting hiphop, R&B, pop, and rock music while patiently awaiting true curation alternatives beyond Pitchfork, Stereogum, Rolling Stone, SiriusXMU, All Songs Considered, or the myriad of Spotify playlists continuing to push capitalism-indie, market-tested millennial whoops, and boardroom-approved Arcade Fire derivatives.
A long time ago, we heard John Peel describe his radio show (paraphrased) as "a combination stuff you think people will like with stuff you know people will like." And we think that's a good philosophy for how to throw together the Big Chungas -- ordering the "best of 2019" in method that feels like the best possible recommendations for wide appeal. But aside from this, the mix intentionally ranges from artists with million dollar PR to self-funded unsigned Bandcamp releases, and everything in between. It seems like the most solid method for getting people to notice the lesser known artists in between the ones they already recognize. For whatever reason, this has remained our entirely arbitrary methodology since this blog's inception.
Today, we continue offering this alternative to anyone who wants it. We know you're out there.
Buy local. Support unsigned bands. Support independent music. Especially now!
Proudly presenting yet another 20 of the biggest of the big chungus of 2019. Two months late, as usual. Non-garbage edition:
40. Spellling “Under The Sun”
39. Davila 666 “Huesos Viejos”
38. Curse Word “Pivot”
37. Carly Rae Jepsen “Automatically In Love”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15n1DoNJMJU
36. Tyler The Creator “New Magic Wand”
35. Riot City “Livin’ Fast”
34. Kim Gordon "Air Bnb"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jhhzy7vr8A
33. The Good Ones featuring Nels Cline "Where Did You Go Wrong, My Love"
32. Big Cheese “Write-Off”
31. Sikka Rymes "Shake Ya Body (Pumpy Riddim)"
30. Lil B “Get That Money Based Freestyle”
2019 will be remembered as the only year when rap/country hybrids didn't make eardrums bleed. [The] latest and possibly final submission to this narrow 5-6 song canon arrived a few weeks ago from none other than Lil B The Based God, deep in his Hunchback of BasedGod mixtape. Our prediction from last October seems solid; Lil B may have locked the thread, despite multiple headlines attempting to brand various garbage as The "Old Town Road of 2020" when they really should be searching for "Old Town Road's answer to Ice Ice Baby." It doesn't have to be good - just fun and wacky and catchy with cross-generation appeal. In this respect, "Get That Money Based Freestyle" is more like "Old Town Road's answer to Just A Friend."
29. Cement Shoes “Unite the Right in Hell”
Detonate the vest.
28. DaBaby “VIBEZ"
"My bad."
27. Wolf Whistle “Lawnmower Man”
26. ShittyBoyz “Game Breaker”
Pipe Bomb Annotated on RapGenius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvSGfBKLbbg
25. Grimes “My Name Is Dark (Art Mix)”
The hot takes are in. Mostly plagiarized from the pod. • "This is what it sounds like to have Elon Musk cum inside of you. BNM."
• Before tracking vocals, it's typically best practice to remove Kenny McCormick's jacket. Maybe she forgot.
• Self-described under the oddly apt "ethereal nu-metal" descriptor, it's not a huge stretch to imagine Grimes' vocals swapped for Jonathan Davis', complete with the breakbeat from "Make Me Bad" or "Falling Away From Me" layered with optional record scratching.
• Long removed from 4-band bills at Great Scott or Shea Stadium, her memories of these shows were surgically removed along with the area of her cornea that used to process the color blue.
• If she was striving for "apocalyptic," mission accomplished, and not a moment too soon. We don't really care about her earlier songs at all. Stick to nu-metal.
24. Steve Lacy "Playground"
This would've been a lock for Top 20 had Steve Lacy remembered to write and record an ending. The bridge builds some nice momentum, and then the song just ends? That's it? Anyway, let's talk about the positive side to crack. What about the good side? We're making this up as we go: The four points on the funk-spectrum are Cocaine, Weed, Satan, and Jesus. Wicked Witch is Satanik Cocaine Funk; Parliament Funkadelic is on the opposite end, the Jesus Weed Funk. We need to hear more of Steve Lacy's Grammy Nominated Apollo XXI (released in tandem with his 21st Apollo journey). If "Playground" is any indication, its x,y axis rests around 3,2 (or Weed,Neutral).23. Fury “Vacation”
No big surprise: The #1 rock radio song of the 2010s was not by Imagine Dragons nor Portugal The Man, but in fact it was "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - a song from motherfucking nineteen-ninety-one. Loud rock bands like Fury and Windhand understand the power of that huge Jack Endino sound - the one that made Nevermind such a classic - and accordingly pulled him aboard to handle sound engineering duties. "Vacation" is right. We need a vacation from iHeart's glockenspiel-heavy version of "rock." By the way, the top 5 rock radio songs of the 2010s also included "Man In A Box," "Come As You Are," "Plush" and "Even Flow." No glaring suggestions here. None at all, unless radio programmers and promoters want to continue ignoring how hard these statistics are screaming in their faces: Rock radio listeners want actual rock music. They crave a true alternative playlisting format pulling at least SOME of their rotation from labels like Run For Cover, Anti-, Relapse, Epitaph, Fat Possum, Triple B, Exploding In Sound, and the like. Substituting Spotify spins as market research is clearly not working. Bands as good as Fury should be fucking huge. How much longer will this era fuel Boomers and Gen X'ers complaints about how "rock is dead" while none of them have heard bands like Fury? Are they basing this entirely off the Andrew Bird soundalikes from the Target commercials?
22. Palehound “Bullshit”
21. Big Thief “Not”
We had a lot of fun this past Fall seeing so many "guitar solos are bad" poptimists publicly losing their shit over the long version of "Not." Now THAT'S how you play an anti-solo, arranged to arrive at the correct moment for the perfect length with all the dopeness one should expect from all those "wrong" notes. It's one of those infrequent moments from the past few years of music that zoomers and millennials didn't realize they wanted or needed, arguably expressing just as much without lyrics as Adrienne Lenker could gather throughout the song's first section, and securing a lock for the highest placement just outside our Top 20. (Yes, there's a 4-minute edit with no solo. Maybe their management suggested this to ensure more scrobbles, but otherwise it's unclear why this exists.)| 100 - 81 || 80 - 61 || 60 - 41 || 40 - 21 || 20 - 1 |
| All 100 Songs |
This is the one that goes "I hate a-youuuu". Some people need to hear that they're hated. 
Is the world prepared for technological armageddon? The digital dark age? Literal #breaktheinternet? One day we'll wake up, and it's all gone. Where's my Spotify? Where's my tweets? Where's my HelloFresh? The stock market commits suicide on live TV. The fires begin. Nuclear explosions in the distance. Watch yourself melt. Watch your friends melt. Watch your family melt. Watch net neutrality melt. Watch Bitcoin melt. Watch Google melt. Watch reddit melt. Watch clickbait melt. Watch paywalls melt. Watch your follower count melt. Watch the blue checkmarks melt. Watch ad revenue melt. Sorry we forgot to follow back. If it makes any difference, it's all been merely a blip in the history of time as we await the sun's engulfing of all we'll ever know.
We'd like to dedicate this entry to the "leanback" dude and his seriously big fingers. // Two jams of pure fire arriving via "homies of the blog;" in the past, we've blurbed of musical acquaintances in a similar manner who may or may not have Googled themselves (or their band name), discovered this blog, figured out who we are, and rightfully placed us into the "garbage asshole" category for tapping into our strangest ambien-induced auditory responses, most of which we don't remember writing due to light amnesia. // "Big Fingers" tends to loop in our heads for days; this was especially true last Fall thanks in no small part to its intense fiery combustion, straightforward uncryptic lyrics, and creepingly earwormy angular riffs. // The growing pensive energy in "Never Nowhere" downshifts into 3rd gear, climbing and brewing. Meeting an unexpected wild acceleration, the halfway checkpoint goes full throttle. Vin Diesel howls in excitement; The Rock just smirks in preparation for layin' the smackdown. // This is why it's probably uncomfortable when getting into the "conflict of interest" portions of the big chungus of 2019. Why did Maneka's jam initiate this big budget visual? In a similar brainwave, we're certain the music licensing for the Marvel cinematic universe botched what could have been their only perfect sync by neglecting 
We would like to dedicate #16 to Crispin Glover whose birthday is April 20th which means that his birthday will be happening for a whole month in 2020 since this will be the only year when 4/20 is a month-long celebration. In an interview in 2011, Back to the Future co-star Michael J. Fox said, "Crispin isn't crazy, just excitable." Crispin is your density; "Destiny" represents a confluence of production references, namely (Sandy) Alex G and Arthur Rizk, affiliate of Red Death, Power Trip, and Code Orange. This might help explain how Glitterer gets a free pass as one of those 8 or 9 non-hardcore bands lucky enough to join multiple hardcore touring packages (ie Young Guv, Tony Molina, Nudie Mag, Lil Ugly Mane, Wicca Phase Springs Eternal). Speaking of back-in-time, "Destiny" clocks in around 2:20-ish, placing it among the project's lengthiest and most realized jams.
An immediate infectious summer jam, "In Your Head" also arrived equipped with a titular reminder of the exact spot where it got firmly stuck for six entire weeks. Whoever said it sounds like young Sade fronting Pavement was half-correct. Again, we're nearly a decade since Yuck, and poptimists simply can't get it through their thick fucking heads that electric guitars existed before or after the '90s. It's like they refuse to accept that any halfway-loud guitar-based verse-chorus rock music has any identity within the 2010s, that it all must be derivative of a bygone era. Seriously, listen to that snare drum tone, and find us the '90s band that sounds like this. They don't exist. We'll accept "young Sade fronting some moderately rockin' Sub Pop band from 2012-2015." Sure, that works fine.
A colossal wave of Weezer-worship bands felt unavoidable in the wake of Nada Surf's "Popular" and Nerf Herder's "Van Halen." Sure enough, 1998 marked a post-Pinkerton explosion highlighted by Ozma's classic Songs of Audible Trucks and Cars CDR release. Whether we like it or not, each passing year adds another 99 records to this pile, typically ranging from bland to lackluster and shipped to college radio from promoters with an apparently unlimited supply of "RIYL Weezer" stickers. And each year, the debris of bland unjustly buries one or two genuinely great and often unheard releases. One of these was 
Full disclosure: This is a lie. The actual #10 is "For No One," the "penultimate" track appearing before "Marijuana Trench" on Holy Serpent's Endless LP. We decided to put "Marijuana Trench" instead because it's a truly outstanding song title, but the jam to hear is "For No One," a much better song about bloodshot dragons ripping mad gravs of bong and exhaling the smoke of the gods. No need to light the flame with a lighter because dragons literally breathe fire and don't really require one aside "for kicks" aka the novelty of the human lighter. Don't believe that Hollywood bullshit; Dragons only know how to fly in slow motion, and they do participate in ganja. "You son of a bitch; I'm in." Also "penultimate" is one of those words that inarticulate people overuse to sound smart.
There might be some lyrical tricks that went over our heads, but we hear "Obsessed" as a decorative shrine. Inherently innocent by design, childhood obsessions are more fun than we realize until decades later, after confronted with weightier concerns. "Obsessed" marks yet another great example of an unheralded album highlight thanks to the same clueless poptimist music writers who preferred the singles without a guitar track. Between her earlier, frostier Soundcloud singles and the subsequent bloom springing from 2019's Keepsake LP, one might say "I gotta give it to Hatchie; yaknow, she really represented; she stepped it up" in a manner not dissimilar from the judges of 
Maybe it's just us and the other gen-x/millennial cusps, but perception through the space time continuum grew exponentially more fucked since right around the release of We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, not-so-coincidentally the first major album release within the 48 hours following the 2016 election of Doctor Professor -- an eternity ago, yet also uncomfortably recent. Three years later, "Combat" highlights uknowhatimsayin¿ -- arguably the LP under Q-Tip's direction that most closely resembles Tribe's imaginary 2019 follow-up, complete with Danny Brown's best uncanny impressions of Phife flowing into a few key insertions of Q-Tip and Consequence. DB's arguably more relevant now than ever, and his lol-bombs never quit: "I die for this shit like Elvis," "Got more pills than the Olsen twins." 
Ricky was a young boy. He had a heart of stone. He walked the streets a soldier. "I have two things to carry, one is the recycles bag and other is the little trash bag. We basically go around and people have their recycles out and they freak out, 'Hey, what are you doing, taking my recycles?' and it's like 'Hey, it's at the curb. We own it, not you.' Apparently there's a bit of a smell because of the recycles and there's fucking bees and hornets and wasps and shit everywhere." Ricky is covered in garbage juice because of the recycles. Fuckin way she goes. 
Speaking of redundancy, here comes Big Thief again rounding out their unprecedented 4-for-4: "Masterpiece" was our #17 in 2016, "Mythological Beauty" was our #7 in 2017, solo jam "Symbol" placed #9 in 2018, and now "UFOF" at #5 is their highest placement, arguably the hottest jam throughout their 4 LPs. As far as late decade dopeness is concerned, no one else in the light-indie/SiriusXMU/NPR spectrum can match or surpass the consistency of Big Thief's lead singles. The only real downside is that we no longer have anything noteworthy to say about this band that hasn't already been said on this blog or elsewhere. 
In 2008, literally every album review of M83's Saturdays = Youth compared "Kim and Jessie" to Molly Ringwald movies. Each subsequent year, a handful of acclaimed artists made equally bland attempts to raise the '80s nostalgia bar. The poptimist boners peaked in the wake of 1989's superficial resemblance of the actual summer '89, stealing thunder from E•MO•TION's botched promo campaign. As the decade progressed, it felt like indie-filmmakers understood the nuances of '80s aesthetic with more clarity than pop producers; take Turbo Kid for example, premiering at Sundance just a few months after 1989. It's a type of nostalgic art that's so painfully detailed that it's almost difficult to tell whether it's a genuine artifact of the era. This is also the case with "More Love," a song that Paula Abdul should probably cover for her unwarrented 2020s comeback. As Sedona's prior Soundcloud tracks stride towards the present, "More Love" marks her current apex of correctly nuanced vocal inflections and structural mastery, leaving us in heated anticipation of her foreshadowed follow-up EP.
Our #3 entry is dedicated to the great Slavoj Žižek, our official 2019 "Hunk Of The Year" and probably of the decade.
What a revelation: I just signed a deal at the mall. Young Baby Jesus CEO was just a regular at the local food court in uptown North Carolina when Interscope's A&R execs finally tracked him down. They ask, "Excuse me sir, are you DaBaby?" as they hand over a record label contract, a fancy ink pen, and one-million dollars in cash. This scenario might have seemed feasible if these were "Suge's" actual lyrics, which they are not. In recent interviews, his frequent shout outs to the late great Rick James did not seem especially suspect until 
Congrats to Beak> on earning their distinction as the only artist who twice placed as our Album Of The Year who then would later also receive Track(s) of the year. Apologies for the tie, but the two jams feel so thematically and texturally unified with this specific moment in history. Back in 2012, the similarly eerie 
Entitled fans on Twitter need to drop this imaginary idea that Grammy voters are obligated to acknowledge the previous year's best music. Grammy voters don't read your thinkpieces and give zero fucks about live tweets. This is the same organization that once named Starlight Vocal Band their Best New Artist. Their first ever Best Metal award went to Jethro Tull (who won against Metallica). They claimed that a Steely Dan reunion album from 2000 was more deserving of Best Album than Radiohead or Eminem. So why in the world would anyone think that anyone other than Bruno Mars was going to walk away with Album, Record and Song of the Year? And why is it worth complaining about publicly? Are people really that bored? How embarrassing does our culture need to get before Twitter stops giving more power to awards show committees? Wasn't it great in the '90s when bands like Soundgarden or Beck or Fiona Apple did not thank God or the fans but instead would accept their award by saying how meaningless it was? (P.S. We kept hearing a version of "That's What I Like It" with Gucci Mane thinking this was the version that got played on the iHeartRadio but forgetting that this was probably the version that got played on Hot 97. And we were ready to say "So the Grammy voters will actually award a song that includes rapping," but it didn't actually include any rap so that sucks.)
Queens and Desert Sessions had a consistently outstanding run of dopeness between 1997 and 2008. With over a full decade since their last essential recordings, their graceful coast through "legacy band" stature received its first truly major speed bump in December when Josh Homme instinctively assaulted a concert photographer mid-set. Josh has gotten away with being a fucking asshole for long enough. Perhaps he should consider avoiding stupid fucking mistakes like this in the future. As for "The Evil Has Landed," it's probably the weakest standout track from any QOTSA album, but a standout nonetheless. 
Is it possible for radio-country to return to the dopeness of the shit kickin' '70s and further from power-country? We were ready to call Willie "The last living Highwayman," but it turns out that Kris Kristofferson is still alive. Whoops. Margo needs a few more hits, and country radio will likely oblige if given enough time. We know he has new music out almost every year, but Willie's voice feels like a revelation in this song. It makes you wanna shout "YES."
As an album preview, "Way Back" felt like false advertising. It's the record's only moment that resembles classic LaFace. We suspected that Organized Noize may have been responsible for the song's production, but two millennial-age writers and producers threw this one together instead. Snoop's verse may have kept the song off of some R&B stations, not unlike "Waterfalls" - 22 years later, R&B stations still insist on playing the rapless edit. Why should "Way Back" be any different? Some things never change.
Her first album in 5 years was previewed with a video shot on VHS for a low key and uncharacteristically chill pop song that had pretty much no shot at chart success. After some soul searching, she realized that conforming to 2017 chart pop was not in her best interests. Plus, she's Nelly Furtado so she can do whatever the hell she wants either way. There are 4 or 5 other songs that would have been more immediately catchy lead singles, but she deliberately moved in the opposite direction. No push to radio. Released in Q1. No end of year lists. Fuck the charts. She got exactly what she wanted.
"I Believe In A Thing Called Love" charted and was played on MTV during an era that does not feel especially distant, although most music fans seem unaware that The Darkness still exists. The lack of adventure inherent within current programming all but guarantees that The Darkness will never chart with another single. But for fans of Permission To Land and One Way Ticket who might be interested, these two songs are probably the best singles they've released in over 10 years. 
Not a joke: It was recently announced that "Perplexing Pegasus" was not only an album preview, but a triple-album preview. So now that "Black Beatles" has cemented Sremm's legacy as "no longer one-album-wonders," one would think they might want to generate a less obnoxious jump to "career artist" status. All Things Must Pass was the only time this worked (although weirdly Speakerboxxx/The Love Below would probably have been more palatable as a triple-album, with 45-50 minutes per disc instead of 2 dauntingly giant 79 minute CDs, which still wasn't enough to fit the album's final song). The average millennial attention span will likely not be able to hold up for three LPs worth of Rae Sremmurd. P.S. This will probably also be the 1st triple-album in the history of pop music to include zero odd "Revolution 9" experiments or crazy jam sessions. Prove us wrong please.
