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Favorite songs of the year 2016:

This is a website I’m planning to use as a platform to get out my favorite songs and albums of each year, starting with my fave songs from 2016. Here’s the full Spotify playlist, which includes all but one song on it (damn soundcloud). My top ten tracks all have writeups with them if you click on the post itself! Hope u enjoy and find some music that you like

#songs of the year 2016

Songs of the year:

1. (Joe Gets Kicked Out Of School For Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says It’s Not A Problem) - Car Seat Headrest

I sat on this track as my favorite of the year for a while, mainly hesitant because I didn’t want to glorify another sad sack white indie rock hero. But the more I thought about that, that concept in itself is kind of the point of “(Joe Gets Kicked Out of School For Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says It’s Not A Problem)”, and Car Seat Headrest’s Teens Of Denial as a whole. There’s no glamour in an opening line like “I get to know myself every weekend, and I’m weak”, followed by the sad sack white kid proverb “hangovers feel good when I know it’s the last one / then I feel so good that I have another one”. It’s fairly tongue in cheek, though, and Will Toledo knows exactly what he’s doing throughout the whole song, which is really just a song about his only experience taking psychedelics, which clearly wasn’t good.

For a song that concludes with the cyclical outro of “drugs are better with friends are better with drugs are better with etc.”, “Drugs With Friends” is quite a sobering song from a guy who claims he’s only smoked weed half a dozen times. We all are, in a sense, the “teens of style” that Toledo forewarns us about; the rebellious acts of drug use become pitfalls to conformity, and “Drugs With Friends” comes with the sort of revelation that another person might gain from, well, taking psychedelics.

Ultimately, I’ve had something of a difficult year that’s flowed up and down through self conceptualizations of acceptance, identity, relationships, and at the center of it all, music. Car Seat Headrest, and specifically this song, came in at a perfect time to give some much needed solace in those aspects of my life, maybe because I’ve never related more to/laughed at a sentence like “so there I was, just another shitbag civilian / afraid of my friends when I was inside / afraid of the cops when I was outside”, or maybe because Toledo doesn’t let any glamorizing poetry about difficult emotions seep into his music. It’s important that “Drugs With Friends” is not really an anti-drug song, at least when stripped to it’s basic elements, and instead it’s Toledo’s thesis statement on a deeper understanding of himself and the sorts of toxic elements that can complacently sneak their way into anyone’s life. Really, in a year that’s been scary and disheartening throughout the country in political, social, cultural spheres, Car Seat Headrest gave me the self-reflective music I needed to process everything else that’s gone on.

#songs of the year 2016 #car seat headrest #drugs with friends #joe gets kicked out of school

Songs of the year:

2. Your Best American Girl - Mitski

“Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me / but I do, I finally do” damn damn damn that’s a good line. “Your Best American Girl” is probably the best (sorry, subjectivity, I know) alt-rock single in the last few years once you start to dissect it beyond it’s grungy 90’s throwback feel. A strange reference point I find myself coming back to is early Weezer, if only Rivers Cuomo was a Japanese-born woman and actually wrote lyrics about accepting lost causes (maybe Mitski is just the woman of Cuomo’s strange dreams).

Regardless, “Your Best American Girl” comes off as such an excellent track because of the disjunction in its lyrics and musical direction. Just as the subtle, nearly whispered vocals of the verse come to a bubbling eruption of screeching guitars, Mitski drops that devastating line, that really just describes a relationship between two people that are much too different for each other. The completed couplet “And you’re an all-American boy / I guess I couldn’t help trying to be your best American girl” finals the blow, but it also reveals the song’s lasting hopefulness that shifts the emotional focus towards self-acceptance and confidence. The track’s equally great music video features Mitski watching the whitest imaginable couple all over each other as she makes out with her hand, but by the end she’s strutting around with her guitar and some sense of self-fulfillment. Even as she mutters “you’re all I’ve ever wanted / I think I’ll regret this”, a roaring guitar breakdown cuts in, letting the rest of the music express what she can’t in words.

#songs of the year 2016 #mitski #your best american girl

Songs of the year:

3. 715 - CREEKS - Bon Iver

Recorded with a Messina, a homemade vocoder style instrument made by Chris Messina that spontaneously creates harmonies out of a single melody, the track feels like the spiritual successor to “Woods”, the track that infamously connected Vernon with Kanye West. But where “Woods” layered vocals to the point of sheer ecstasy, “CREEKS” is a barren display of Vernon’s scruff, emotive voice. I’ve seen articles that liken 22, A Million to Kid A for the way you can hear Vernon’s broken emotions through the electronic static, but it’s only on this track where you can fully appreciate the beauty that comes from purely inorganic sound. Using splintered poetry to depict a lost sense of belonging to a lover, Vernon’s voice cracks and shifts from delicate to commanding in its four brief verses. “Honey understand that I have been left here in the reeds / but all I’m trying to do is get my feet out from the crease” pleads Vernon at the song’s vocal climax just before drifting once more into the background of a sea of manufactured voices.

“715 - CREEKS” (pardon me for not finding the weird E emoji he uses) is the shortest song on Bon Iver’s 22, A Million, and it still works better in context of the whole album. But where the other, shorter songs on the album (“45” and “21 MOON WATER”) function more as integrated interludes, “CREEKS” does stand out on its own for its individual strength as a song. All of 22, A Million feels as though Justin Vernon has graciously allowed us to interrupt his band halfway through a studio session, but somehow the album works tremendously as it exists in small, odd sketches, of which I think “CREEKS” is the best.

#songs of the year 2016 #bon iver #715 creeks #creeks

Songs of the year:

4. Real Friends - Kanye West

I’m hesitant to talk about Kanye at this point, regardless the context. I revisited The Life Of Pablo recently on a long flight, and after the recent series of events, it strikes me much more as a genuinely scary, concerning album- Kanye completely unhinged, maybe actually off his Lexapro. While people sit back and commend J. Cole for his “real” verse on “False Prophets” about Kanye falling off, I can’t help but liken it to the same problem as entirely blaming Trump voters for his election as President. Instead, it’s the system that we have all built that allows for something like that to happen, and in regards to Kanye, we exist in a menacing celebrity culture that thrives off of collapse and the downward spiral.

But everything that’s culminated in Kanye’s shitshow of 2016 started on a casual Friday when West uploaded “Real Friends” to Soundcloud (he deleted and reposted it multiple times, but that’s beside the point). Wonderfully produced by Bo1-da and Frank Dukes, and featuring an interjecting Ty Dolla $ign, of literally all people, “Real Friends” gave Kanye four minutes to cut back on shock value and deliver his most sincere sounding verse since, I don’t know, MBDTF. While Kanye’s antics have felt increasingly threadbare and impenetrable as his fame and ego increasingly define himself to the public more so than his music, “Real Friends” is as real sounding as a good conversation with a troubled friend.

The track is made up of great imagery like Kanye uncomfortably walking around a family reunion, and it takes him down to earth more than any unprecedented rant could elevate him. “Real friends, how many of us?” he ponders before suggesting that maybe he’s not even one of them. “I guess I get what I deserve, don’t I?” hurts more now than it did upon its release, but ultimately “Real Friends” is the closest West has come to breaching his current persona in the public eye. After all, we base our understanding of celebrities and musicians on a mere sliver of their human character, and rarely has someone with such perceived ego been able to shed that skin in such a vulnerably public way. Here’s to hoping that Kanye can tap into that again as he has so many times before.

#songs of the year 2016 #kanye west #real friends

Songs of the year:

5. Seigfried - Frank Ocean

There’s an excellent genius annotation on the lyrics of “Seigfried”, the penultimate track from Frank Ocean’s muted wonderland of Blonde, that addresses the possible meanings of its title. I won’t delve into it, but there’s an amalgam of cultural reference points that Ocean draws from, which holds true for Blonde as a whole. The track opens with lyrics directed at his lover, it shifts to reflections on his own state of being, he breaks into a spoken/rapped monologue on rebirth and mortality, he concludes with the beautifully simple line “I’d do anything for you / in the dark”, and somewhere along the way he reappropriates an Elliott Smith lyric.

Don’t mistake the quiet for a less bold, deep cut on a record of amazing, standalone tracks; “Seigfried” is the real emotional peak of Blonde. On a record where the listener follows Ocean on a path of understanding, acceptance, and growth, this track is placed at a moment where it’s easy to get lost in the abyss of ethereal, half sketched out songs, and that feels intentional. Frank is, after all, talking about parts of his life left in the shadows and out of the public eye, so maybe that’s exactly how it should come across.

#songs of the year 2016 #frank ocean #seigfried

Songs of the year:

6. True Love Waits - Radiohead

For a band that was once so in tune with the current social and political atmosphere, AMSP found Radiohead at their most nuanced, leaving much needed space in the music for Yorke to reflect on the dissolution of a 20 year relationship with the mother of his kids. “True Love Waits”, then, bookends everything that the band has accomplished in those last 20 years, and finds a usually opaque Yorke at his most vulnerable and personal. The sprawling vocal hook of “just don’t leave” resonates more than any cynical, vague couplet that he’s ever put on record, and it’s still borderline jarring to hear such a broken, melancholic song about love and loss from the guys who once wrote a three part, six minute epic about the pitfalls of modern technology.

“True Love Waits” is the saddest, most atmospheric song in Radiohead’s career of sad, atmospheric songs. A nearly 20 year old song first recorded on the live I Might Be Wrong EP, the final minutes of A Moon Shaped Pool find Thom Yorke ruminating alone on a piano, so bare that you can hear the strings hitting the piano underneath Yorke’s quivering falsetto.

#songs of the year 2016 #radiohead #true love waits

Songs of the year:

7. Size of the Moon - Pinegrove

The word “fine” has rarely been so aptly used as on “Size of The Moon”, the centerpiece of Pinegrove’s great Cardinal record. “Do you wanna dance? Fine”, “Do you wanna talk? Fine”, “Do you wanna die? Fine”- so goes the first line to each verse of the song. Evan Stevens Hall creaks at a lover, reminiscing about moving furniture and dancing around in a living room in the opening lines, which still strike me more than most lyrics I’ve heard all year: “I got caught, you got those Caravaggio moves / We had some good ideas but we never left that fucking room”. As the “fine’s” go along, there’s an increasing sense of melancholy and worry as Hall’s voice wavers in and out of tune.

Over wistful, midtempo guitars and a lulling banjo, “Size of the Moon” is ultimately about the stagnancy of a relationship, the familiar feeling of an emotional stalemate and a longing for something that might not have ever been there. Solipsism is an idea that Hall explores throughout the record, but it’s on “Size of the Moon” that the narrator’s own head starts to cave in on itself. The climax is neither celebratory progress nor a completed downward spiral, it’s two people laughing and crying at themselves and each other, almost harkening back to that last scene in Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. “I don’t know what I’m afraid of, but I’m afraid” What happens from here?

#songs of the year 2016 #size of the moon #pinegrove

Songs of the year:

8. Drippin’ - Young Thug

“Drippin”, then, is the moment where all of Thug’s previous ventures into the unknown come together in an exceptionally energized three minutes. The four bars that start around the 1:30 mark are the hardest fifteen seconds of music all year, and the even stranger screeches that ensue make Young Thug seem more similar to Death Grips than Lil Yachty. While there is some verse/chorus structure to the track, “Drippin” feels like the no holds barred incarnation of Young Thug, one where he immerses himself in the bubbly production and improvises with his heart on his sleeve. Even if we have no remote idea what that heart is saying, we understand it all the same.

In a rather worthwhile Mitski “Over/Under” video, there’s a moment where the songwriter quite wonderfully sums up the confounding appeal of Young Thug: “He does shit no one else is doing. It doesn’t seem like he’s concerned with sounding good, he just wants to express something”. I’ve groaned over countless social media interactions and YouTube comments where Young Thug detractors and fans incoherently clash over the “sanctity” of rap music, but all I have to say is that no one can convey emotion or create a mood quite like Thug can. His bafflingly slurred words roll out of his mouth like paint, and forgive me for the art school douchery, but he comes off as some kind of abstract expressionist the way he combines words.

#songs of the year 2016 #young thug #drippin

Songs of the year:

9. Crying In Public - Chairlift

“Crying In Public” is a deceptively happy little tune. Chairlift have always had a knack for mildly sappy, borderline Urban Outfitters balladry, but they’re off kilter enough to pull off that feat without any justified eye rolling. It’s something I could liken to a John Hughes movie; this song could adequately soundtrack The Breakfast Club, or literally any movie with a prom scene in the way that it flirts between undeniable sincerity and overblown emotion. “Crying In Public” is also literally about crying in public, on a train as the narrator is taken aback by the little gestures of someone she cares quite dearly for. The song’s slow burn eventually bursts into lead singer Caroline Polachek’s trademark falsetto acrobatics, leading into her best melody yet. It’s such an odd and dramatic vignette that she entirely conveys this genuine lack of composure over falling in love.

#songs of the year 2016 #crying in public #chairlift

Songs of the year:

10. Too Many Voices - Andy Stott

“Too Many Voices”, the last song and title track of Stott’s excellent new album, finds frequent collaborator Alison Skidmore being engulfed in distortions and manipulations of her own, haunting voice. Something along the lines of “eleven stations from home / wonder if home will still be” rings throughout the song, but the track’s scattered instrumental and stubbornness to stay on a rhythmic grid dominate the overall tone. It could be too easy to symbolically write the song off as some sort of metaphor for the overwhelmed, frantic, “post-truth” world we find ourselves trying to keep up with, but Stott’s cluttered symphony of voices transcends a straightforward explanation. Instead, “Too Many Voices” is a necessary song for a year filled with clutter and misinformation; as with his best songs, Stott reaches for something simultaneously destructive and beautiful.

Too often I appreciate songs that exist in a hazy, ambiguous realm of meaning or intention. In a year of disappointment throughout social, political, and cultural spheres, 2016 needed music with specific purpose and focused emotion. Solange, Chance The Rapper, Beyonce, and Frank Ocean, to name a few, helped give the world a pungent taste of this particularity, but much less politically fueled artists like Andy Stott were given enough crawl space to exist in the same sort of context.

#songs of the year 2016 #andy stott #too many voices