The decade is over, and in the spirit of pointless lists to pass some time, I’ve ranked what I feel are the ten best songs of the decade.
Seeing that I didn’t hear a lot of the music that was released this decade, and my taste is what it is, this is (of course) a completely subjective and imperfect list. That being said: I did try to put my personal biases aside. If it were really up to me, this would be ten weird punk songs that six of my friends and I know about. (That being said, everyone go listen to the band Pile. They’re good. I didn’t rank them, but you should all listen to Pile.)
Anyway. I tried to factor in cultural impact, popularity, and other stuff into the rankings. Some are more important than good. Others are just plain perfect songs.
Let’s get to the list.
Fair warning: A lot of these songs have explicit language.
10. Lil Nas X — “Old Town Road”
Is this song country? Is it rap? Is it even a real song? Is it a meme? I still have no idea, and I suppose that’s the point. “Old Town Road” wasn’t so much a catchy song (though man, it was catchy), it was a statement about gatekeeping, and labels, and “authenticity,” and everything we’ve ever thought about music. There’s no set path anymore. There are no dues to be paid, for better or worse. You just create. And if people like it, you make a video with Billy Ray Cyrus.
9. Robyn — “Dancing On My Own”
Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” isn’t just a perfect pop song (which it is) but it’s also a reclaiming of a personal narrative. Robyn burst onto the scene as part of the aughts pop movement, all boy bands and girl groups, then came back with … this. Digital, flawless, the song is one of independence and power.
8. Lana Del Rey — “Video Games”
LDR released a lot of great music this decade, but “Video Games” is still haunting me all these years later, a flawless piece of hopeless pop that summarizes just about every bad relationship any of us have ever been in.
With her sultry croon, LDR channels pop songs of the past to pay homage to her man, but does so with clear eyes: She knows he’s terrible, but she just can’t help herself.
7. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars — “Uptown Funk”
Listen, say what you will about this song. It’s unoriginal, certainly, sugary to the point that it will give you a toothache. But here’s the thing: We will be listening to it at weddings until we croak. This is an all-timer pop song, whether any of us like it or not.
6. Beyonce — “All Night”
It’s unfair to limit Beyonce’s contribution to this list to just one song, but the song I will take with me from this decade is “All Night.” The penultimate song on Lemonade, an album about Bey reckoning with her husband’s infidelity, “All Night” shows the singer finding strength through forgiveness.
She knows what he’s done. She’s gone through the stages of grief, and anger, and has finally hit acceptance. She forgives him, not because she’s weak, but because she has made a choice, one out of strength. The video overlays videos of New Orleans finding a way to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, a metaphor perhaps a bit too on the nose, but we’ll forgive it. Then the “Spottieottiedopaliscious” horns hit, and I’m a wreck.
5. Kanye West — “Runaway”
The plinking piano. That video, the stark images of the ballerinas with Kanye West and the ghostly voice of Pusha T. “Runaway” is the best track on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye’s true masterpiece, his high point before everything went sideways. It feels nostalgic to listen to it now, but man, it’s still thrilling. One man still completely trusting his ear, and his vision. “Runaway” is a man captured at the absolute peak of his powers.
4. Titus Andronicus — “A More Perfect Union”
The Monitor, Titus Andronicus’ 2010 masterpiece, is a punk rock opus run through the lens of Springsteen. This song, to me, didn’t so much channel Springsteen as completely unmake his world, and capture our world in the process.
Springsteen felt sadness and desolation in his songs, so he hit the open road. In “A More Perfect Union,” Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles feels that same sadness and desolation, so he hits the open road … and then realizes “Oh wait … what have I done?”
It’s the scene in The Graduate where they finally run away together, flee the wedding, and then there’s a pause, and the moment when they are confronted with the horror of their decision.
The song has an intro written by Abraham Lincoln (seriously), a shoutout to the Fung Wah Bus, and multiple anthemic singalongs. It’s lasting worth, however, is the capturing of that fear. For a generation that was told by our parents: “Go and have your moments of rebellion, it’ll all work out,” only to find out it wouldn’t all work out, this spoke to us. Released at the height of the recession, Stickles belted out lyrics which captured our horror and our fear. “Tramps like us,” he sings, “baby we were born to die.”
3. Frank Ocean — “Bad Religion”
“Bad Religion” is the song where we got to meet Frank Ocean, got to know and understand him, and at the time, it felt like something big. It felt like something important.
The song’s plot is one any Ocean fan knows well: A man gets in a car and tries to escape his problems. But what makes this song so powerful is how it blends the tiny (a conversation with a cab driver) and the large (religion, sexuality, the pain of unrequited love) in a way that feels natural and earned.
As for how it applies to the 2010s: In the song, a man pours his heart out to a cab driver, revealing more to a stranger than he will to the people closest to him. What is the internet, if not for that?
2. Migos feat. Lil Uzi Vert — “Bad and Boujee”
“Bad and Boujee,” to me, is the song that took all the best moments of rap in the past decade and boiled them all down to their essence. It’s tossing out the cake mix and jamming your hand into the jar of frosting. This is Migos asking: “What if we made the whole plane out of the black box?”
The triplets that Pusha T and others had peppered occasionally into their songs for years? Migos said eff it: We’ll just make the whole song those. Ad libs and call backs? Yep. They’re all in there too. Stuff ’em in. Forget waiting around for those cool moments that make your hair stand on end — the whole song will be goosebump-inducing.
Migos had been playing with these ideas for years, but on “Bad and Boujee” they perfected them. It’s their masterpiece. Toss in a perfect meme edit with Sid the Science Kid, and you’ve got everything you want in a song.
1. Kendrick Lamar — “Alright”
The best song of the 2010s is also the most important song of the 2010s, a song that captured the terror of being alive this decade, but packaged it with an audacious sentiment: We’re gonna be alright.
Did Lamar actually believe those words? Unclear. The song is so interesting because, while there’s hope, he’s almost convincing himself of it in real time. “Do you hear me? Do you feel me?” he asks, as if to himself.
Lamar knows it’s necessary, to convince himself that they will, in fact, be alright. He knows it’s the only way to live. “I can see the evil,” he raps. He’s awake, not dreaming, and understands what’s going on around him. Yet, still, he chooses hope. What other choice does he have?