| 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 |
Yes, we know the picture is of Sonic Youth on The Simpsons and not of Body/Head, the band Kim Gordon formed with Bill Nace in 2012. (It was tough for us to find interesting Kim Gordon-related memes.) Our video treatment for "Abstract" would show Kim Gordon and Bill Nace confined in adjacent holding cells, belting out the demons of their respective loneliness. The warden doesn't seem to notice or care that pedal boards and amps are keeping them company before all hell breaks loose.
Is this Jay-Z's lame “Don't do drugs” jam? Magna Carta officially kicks off the era of “Dad-Rap,” stuff that sounds decently modern but mostly appeals to the baser impulses of hiphop fans who are old enough to run for president.* The chorus alludes to hiphop's recent incredibly lame obsession with fashion designers, essentially stating “I'm too dope and important to associate with the same recreational activity as common college freshmen.” And while the 8-bit beat took as much shit as the lyrical hook, the song musically still impresses us enough to place as “essential 2013.” Call it a guilty pleasure if you'd like.
A guilty pleasure discovery from 
Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper negotiate through mind games in the live action Hollywood version of Grand Theft Auto. "Light Raking" pumps loudly during the intense bus chase, while "Some Songs" is reserved for the pensive feelings montage. For Polvo, Siberia secures their slot reigning among the best reformed 90s indie-bands.
...Like Clockwork turned out to be the first Queens album with no re-recordings of previously released non-album tracks. (Last year, 
Katy Perry is the presence that signals over-saturation of any hot radio trend. We accurately predicted early in 2013 that Katy's album would certainly arrive with a civil-war-wave influenced radio hit. And it didn't take long before “Roar” finally arrived, just in time to cash-in on dismal washboard/stomping/banjo vomit from the likes of The Lumineers and Imagine Dragons. However, no one could have predicted such an immense ray of light from the most unlikely of places: Appearing as an early highlight on Beyonce's self-titled, “XO” acts as the antithesis of “Roar,” essentially justifying the entire civil-war-wave subgenre while supplying the world with its artistic and commercial pinnacle all within the same breath. 