#hndrk2010s

[hndrk]

Songs of the Decade

All in one list. Decent decade!

My Top 50 of the 2010s: See all individual posts here.

[hndrk]

[#13/50 of 2010s] Charli XCX, “Stay Away”

Charli! Who knew she turned out to be one of the decade’s most preeminent figures in pop? Well, the signs were there from the start. True Romance was such an incredibly strong debut and remains my favourite sound of hers. Half the album could’ve easily found their way onto this list (Nuclear Seasons, You’re The One, You (Ha Ha Ha), Set Me Free…), but Stay Away sits above them all. It’s my idea of pop to a tee and one the finest singles of the 2010s.

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My Top 50 of the 2010s: See all entries so far here.

[hndrk]

[#16/50 of 2010s] Sufjan Stevens, “The Only Thing”

I remember posting about this when it came out and using the word “sublime” like four times. But that’s really it though, isn’t it? Carrie & Lowell didn’t exactly come out of nowhere given Sufjan’s prior achievements, but I was fully unprepared for how consistently stellar and emotionally resonant the album turned out to be. Probably in my Top 3 albums of the decade, and this is my favourite cut from it.

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My Top 50 of the 2010s: See all entries so far here.

[hndrk]

[#17/50 of 2010s] Vampire Weekend, “Step”

I’m exiting the decade without having fully figured out exactly how much I like Vampire Weekend — sometimes it really clicks, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m having a hard time picking anything other than MVOTC as their strongest album, just because it felt like such a statement. And this is the quintessential Vampire Weekend song, the perfect encapsulation of everything good about the band.

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My Top 50 of the 2010s: See all entries so far here.

[hndrk]

[#05/50 of 2010s] Taylor Swift, “Blank Space”

Naturally. The best pop single of the decade. 

Taylor has been one of my favourites artists of the decade and while there are a number of songs of hers (Enchanted, Delicate, All Too Well, Style, Cornelia Street) that would feature in an extended list, my favourite of those was never in question. There’s something really magic about the sugar rush that comes from listening to a perfect pop song.

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My Top 50 of the 2010s: See all entries so far here.

[hndrk]

 [#49/50 of 2010s] Waxahatchee, “Noccalula”

Katie Crutchfield got most of her acclaim this decade from the follow-ups Cerulean Salt and Ivy Tripp, but the lo-fi debut American Weekend has always been my personal favourite. And this track is its standout to me, not least because it features some of the most quietly affecting lyrics of the decade:

And your lips are moving Your mouth is so close to mine I almost can taste your spit Pilsner brew and cigarettes If it keeps up we'll run out of time I'll write you letters and I'll write you songs And you will be endlessly distracting and then It falls flat onto paper again You're in the Carolinas and I'm going to New York And I'll be much better there Or that's what I'm hoping for And we will never speak again

Goddamit.

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My Top 50 of the 2010s: See all entries so far here.

[hndrk]

[#40/50 of 2010s] Cullen Omori, “Cinnamon”

Not often you see fault lines as clearly as in the Smith Westerns split. Guitarist Max Kakacek wanted to do something else, and did so in Whitney, while frontman Cullen Omori just wanted more of the same. And he mostly did so on his two solo outings so far — to somewhat mixed results. The songwriting isn't as uniformly strong as with his former band, but at least on his solo debut single he managed to hit the same heights. This is a glorious, glorious track.

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My Top 50 of the 2010s: See all entries so far here.

[hndrk]

[#03/50 of 2010s] Sky Ferreira, “Everything Is Embarassing”

On another day, this would have been my number one. And maybe it should have been; everything about it feels like such a descriptive pick for the decade. Of course the punchline is that I am/was? a big Sky Ferreira fan with a treasured mp3 folder of early-career unreleased + rarities who nonetheless thought her debut album was a crushing disappointment. She’s always been a fascinating pop artists with her musical output culminating in the Ghost EP, but the uninspired grunge pop of her debut just wasn’t my thing at all. And still none of it matters when you’ve released a song as absolutely perfect as this.

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My Top 50 of the 2010s: See all entries so far here.