Spotify Playlist of the Top 50
Spotify Playlist of More That I Loved but Didn’t Have Room for—check back, I’m still adding

50. Lil’ Wayne feat. Cory Gunz- “6’7’”
49. Cold Cave- “The Great Pan Is Dead”
48. Real Estate- “It’s Real”
47. 1, 2, 3- “Work”
46. Cults- “You Know What I Mean” 
45. Shabazz Palaces- “Swerve…the repping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)”
44. Oneohtrix Point Never- “Child Soldier”
43. Howth- “I Will Always Love You”
42. The Strokes- “Gratisfaction”
41. Yuck- “Shook Down”
40. Nicolas Jaar- “Colomb”
39. Ducktails feat. Panda Bear- “Killin’ the Vibe”
38. Washed Out- “Eyes Be Closed”
37. The National- “Think You Can Wait”
36. Nicki Minaj- “Superbass”
35. Curren$y- “She Don’t Want a Man”
34. The Drums- “Money”
33. College, Electric Youth- “A Real Hero”
32. Fleet Foxes- “Helplessness Blues”
31. Youth Lagoon- “17”
30. Lykke Li- “Sadness Is a Blessing”
29. Adele- “Rolling in the Deep”
28. Adele- “Someone Like You”
27. Girls- “Vomit”
26. Wu Lyf- “LYF”
25. Junior Boys- “Banana Ripple”
24. Rick Ross feat. T.I.- “9 Piece”
23. Frank Ocean- “Songs for Women”
22. Wiz Khalifa- “No Sleep”
21. Gauntlet Hair- “Top Bunk”
20. Holy Ghost!- “Some Children”
19. Das Racist- “Michael Jackson”
18. Panda Bear- “Last Night at the Jetty”
17. Drake- “Headlines”
16. Jay-Z and Kanye West feat. Mr. Hudson- “Why I Love You”

15. The Weeknd- “The Morning”- The Weeknd aren’t on Spotify, though their internet presence is a key to their success. Likewise, their dominant aesthetic means that there are so many YouTube tribute videos for “The Morning” that it’s hard to tell which one is official—if any of them are. This need to imitate them without ever duplicating them says a lot about House of Balloons’ sound. It doesn’t seem to be much more than the airy, Prince-aping thump that informs all of modern R&B. But, whether it’s Abel Tesfaye’s enduring ache or, here, obviously the cloud-clearing beat drop at 1:36, there’s something you can’t shake.

14. Mr. Muthafuckin’ ExQuire feat. Despot, Das Racist, Danny Brown, El-P- “The Last Huzzah”- This remix is basically a cover of the landmark “Flava in Ya Ear (Remix)”, from the video to the bottle-clinking on the intro. Unlike most cinematic remakes, however, this one is truly inspired. No one can hear El-P’s verse (or even read a transcript) without calling it futuristic. But at the same time, “Huzzah” harkens back to the hip-hop arguments people used to have all the time. Was Danny Brown the Busta Rhymes on it or was Heems? Who won overall? It’s six MC’s trying to outdo one another over rudimentary plodding. Isn’t this what it’s all about?

13. Bon Iver- “Calgary”- I’m saving myself for later in this list.

12. DJ Khaled feat. Drake, Rick Ross, Lil’ Wayne- “I’m on One”- Even DJ Khaled knows to stay out of the way when he corrals the ingredients for such a hypnotic banger. While Drake dances around 40’s murky beat with a syrupy chorus, Ross lands every syllable precisely. And while Wayne is the weak link in the group, even he came up with a line that I once looped for ten minutes in a row.*
 
11. tUnE-yArDs- “Bizness”- To troll my wife, I’ve lately been fond of saying, “I’m not interested in real instruments anymore.” This statement isn’t true, although some of my favorite music of the past few years would back it up. In last year’s version of these lists, I complimented how you can hear the “fuzzy strains” of How to Dress Well, how you can “hear the music bursting at its seams.” And I felt that literal push on limitations was relegated to the manipulations of electronic music. But the most impressive achievement of Merrill Garbus’ W H O K I L L, especially this and “Gangsta”, is that she can approximate that same hand-reaching-out-from-the-TV expansiveness with her voice and a pair of tom-tom drums. 

10. Alex Turner- “Piledriver Waltz”- Considering that I’m not particularly a fan of Turner’s day-job as lead singer of The Arctic Monkeys, this song—and the rest of his work on the Submarine soundtrack—surprised me. What sticks out in this bittersweet, bridge-heavy ballad is his imagination as a songwriter. While anyone can personify the Heartbreak Hotel, it takes a special eye to conceive of how the cubbies of pamphlets in the back booth would look.

9. Tyler, the Creator- “Yonkers”- Over the past year, the hype surrounding Tyler the Creator and his crew often eclipsed the music itself. Eventually, their shock tactics grew old, but the day the stark video for “Yonkers” came out was an incredible moment. The horror movie stabs are irrepressible, and, for a bit over four minutes, Tyler is in complete control of his caustic croak. On “Yonkers”, his violent, homophobic, controversy-baiting worldview seems necessary. 

8. Clams Casino- “I’m God (Instrumental)”- In a recent interview, Brian Eno was asked which young artists he admired, and the only one he could think of was a twenty-three year old making beats on his computer in New Jersey. That seems trenchant not just because it shows how music has been democratized, but also because the creator of modern ambient music loves a guy whose maximalism draws as much attention to it as possible. I like Lil’ B’s approach to this instrumental, but he makes the common mistake of announcing that “this is real talk,” that what you’re about to hear from this swooning, delicate music is important. After the first few manipulations of the sample, you can tell for yourself.

7. James Blake- “A Case of You”- This is a Joni Mitchell cover, and it’s from Blake’s afterthought EP, not the self-titled album that is, on the whole, much better. So I guess it’s cheating. But if I’m apologizing, then so is Blake as he rushes through the arrangement, clipping his otherworldly voice and sheepishly keeping it in his range. The song seems to be not only a comment on Blake’s detractors who say that he can’t simplify what makes him great, but also on the song “A Case of You” itself. It succeeds on every front and reminds us that the most tossed-off, unpolished songs can also be the best. If your bare-bones piano accompaniment makes me cry in the pasta aisle of the supermarket, number seven is yours.

6. Beyonce- “Countdown”- There are a lot of things Beyonce does well. In the late ’90s, she was good at being the least approachable in a cadre of Houston popular girls, and now she’s good at being the most approachable in a group of the most famous people on the planet. If I had to name one skill she has that unites both of those identities, however, it’s singing gracefully over really fast music. Although 4 is mostly ballads, B. reminds us on its standout that she still knows how to swing across a kaleidoscope of skittering drums and double-time horns. She sells the gimmicky chorus and delivers enough quotables to leave you breathless, just as she’s effortlessly drawing her own breath for another round.

5. The Rapture- “How Deep Is Your Love”- It seems as if the buzz-cycle works so fast now that people can’t even bother to listen to sophomore or junior efforts while they’re falling over one another for the next newcomer. On their resolute full-length In the Grace of Your Love, The Rapture show that they would be the most written-about band in the country if they hadn’t already been the most written-about band in the country eight years ago. “How Deep Is Your Love,” equal parts four-finger piano stumble and tambourine jangle, is the distillation of the dance-punk sound they pioneered. The multi-tracked vocals in the cool-down get me every time.

4. Cass McCombs- “County Line”- Ah, the electric piano. Long the main ingredient for anonymous salsa and faceless funk, here it serves as the sustained bridge for McCombs’ articulate moping. Its rich tone keeps his voice from being more than a whine, and its wandering stitches together what, on paper, could sound like complaint-rock. The electric piano is what turns this into something as grandiose as it is insular. It creates a perfect slow song for people at the party by themselves.

3. M83- “Midnight City”- The centerpiece of Anthony Gonzalez’s electro-fantasia Hurry Up We’re Dreaming is “Midnight City,” a sprawling portrait of bright lights and the big city. It’s anchored by a bass-line that is curious but never quite sinister, and Gonzalez’s voice harmonizes with itself hauntingly until the song flies away (with a sax solo!) for the last minute. I hear this song as a tension between that expectant L.A. party and its inevitable hangover. There’s a line at the beginning—“The night city grows/Look and see her eyes, they glow”—that reminds me of that symbol in The Great Gatsby, that judging eye billboard that no high school English teacher can live without. There’s someone watching us who will make us pay, but, for now, let’s dance. 

2. Bon Iver- “Holocene”- The first time you hear this song, it sounds sedate. But after a few more listens—or, say, four in a row on the internet jukebox at Balcony Bar on Magazine Street—it reveals buoyant movement. For example, the first verse’s “it’s on its head, it struck the street/You’re in Milwaukee, you’re on your feet” stacks propulsion before stopping it with the image of an icy road that puts everything into humbling perspective. Despite the epiphany of the chorus, the presentation is steady and workman-like, the drums marching and Vernon’s falsetto dipping rather than diving. What comes across all over Bon Iver’s second LP is this: Spinning in circles really fast is no big deal—the way you feel when you stop is.

1. Drake- “Marvin’s Room”- I was a Professional Writing major in college, and I spent a semester cultivating a wise, circumspect, oblique voice—at least more thoughtful and discreet than most of the bros in my class. For the last assignment, however, I turned in a poem about “hollow, water-logged drunk-dials” to “bitches who didn’t love me,” and the whole workshop assumed I was writing in character. The professor congratulated me for experimenting with a voice that was so unlike my own.

What they didn’t understand was that it was the most honest poem I had written. They didn’t understand that the other side of thoughtful was wounded—that, to borrow the type of MySpace philosophy that Drake often abuses, “hurt people hurt people.” In “Marvin’s Room”, through meticulous production built on fumes of groaning minor chords, Drake tries to uncover that same idea of sensitivity as cracked shield. Barely registering beyond a whisper, his tone shifts from conciliatory to abusive and back again, floating from one melody to the next to match the execution to theory. From its tentative introduction to its back-patting piano coda, it’s self-centered music at its best.

*- “I walk around the club, fuck everybody.” Ask about my one-man late-night DJ sessions; I’m available.