The Top 50 Songs of 2010

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top 50 songs of 2010

10. Deerhunter – “Revival” (4AD)
(Single; from Halcyon Digest)
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Deerhunter has been consistently rewarding listeners with their increasing willingness to exercise their pop instincts. Their latest full-length Halcyon Digest is a treasure trove of ethereal pop genius, highlighted by this stunning gem. One of the truly perfect moments on the record, “Revival” finds singer Bradford Cox offering up an intriguing account of a rewarding spiritual journey, albeit one by plagued by a mysterious darkness. Built around a classic arpeggio, the song is absolutely infectious. The epiphany comes at the 1:20 mark when, as the song returns to its original key, things come around full circle to the opening riff with Cox’s harmonizing vocals swirling in the ether. Paradoxically, it’s in this chilling moment, when the drums drop out, leaving “Revival” to weightlessly soar up to the heavens. – Chris Karman

9. Titus Andronicus – “A More Perfect Union” (XL)
(Single; from The Monitor)
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It begins with the words of Abraham Lincoln and seven minutes later closes with a quote from William Lloyd Garrison, one of America’s most vociferous abolitionists. In between, however, is a riotous combination of rock and roll and late 19th century history. It’s as if Ken Burns sat in with Conor Oberst fronting the Replacements, with a lyrical nod to the Boss along the way. The entire album, The Monitor, is absolute genius, but its opener, “A More Perfect Union,” sets the tone, ramping the album up to eleven out of the gate. Great comedians say that you start with the second funniest joke, and close with your funniest. “The Battle of Hampton Roads” is a transformative epic, but “A More Perfect Union” might just follow a different model, that of Saving Private Ryan, with a blistering introduction leading into a solid work throughout. – Terrance Terich

8. Women – “Eyesore” (Jagjaguwar)
(from Public Strain)
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Women excel at creating flashes of beauty that are nearly obscured by the enveloping haze that surrounds them. Public Strain‘s closer is the moment where the haze momentarily subsides, allowing Women’s pop smarts to really shine through. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t exactly “Help Me Rhonda,” most of the lyrics are completely indiscernible and the song’s winding riffs take some extra attention to fully grasp. But taken in the context of Public Strain‘s aforementioned fog, “Eyesore” is downright catchy. What really makes the really song soar is how well all of the shuffling pieces come together. Over the course of six-plus minutes, the band shifts and turns a number of times, finally ending up on an infectious coda that closes the song (and album) out. All the while the bass grooves, the guitars weave together magnificently, and Patrick Flegel’s cracked vocal anchors the tone perfectly. – Chris Karman

7. Janelle Monáe – “Tightrope” [feat. Big Boi] (BadBoy)
(Single; from The ArchAndroid)
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If there was a post-ideological artist in 2010, it was Janelle Monáe, who regularly made the most specific insights into race, gender and lifestyle. “Tightrope” is every bit as self-aware as all that, with everything about it labeled — the “funkiest horn section in Metropolis” (“we call that classy brass.”); banging bass drums that beg you to look at them; buoyant calls for voodoo and ukulele. For a song that’s literally about stability it’s wondrously mobile. Big Boi co-stars, but the ooh-wah BGVs are the critical element, coolly invoking the whole diaspora of soul music from the swamp to the suite. – Anthony Strain

6. The-Dream – “Yamaha” (Def Jam)
(from Love King)
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If you like old-school R&B drums, which are the best-sounding drums ever, you are probably listening to “Yamaha” right now. The-Dream has been killing radio (haha!) what’s left of it, for a while now. But with “Yamaha,” he raised the bar so high nobody else came close to reaching it, even in a spectacular year for commercial R&B. If Prince’s greatest legacy was recursion as applied to sex, The-Dream is its worthiest steward. On “Yamaha” the magic of clutch and brake and the magic of “freak you on the freeway” are dazzlingly familiar to anyone who ever fully understood the term “Purple One” or just like the use of anthropomorphism as regards a missed connection. Still, only The-Dream could have made “Yamaha.” Sonically it’s so bespoke it rings with money, real and imaginary, not to mention the kind of romanticism that knows no conflict between the guttural and the silky. The vocals are flawless, lapsing between registers with trapezeoidal ease. But oh, those drum sounds. ?uestlove, for one, extolled them on Twitter but it’s not like expert testimony is required. Drums are the story of “Yamaha,” not lurid synth content or dubious tattoos or police hatred of an ass so fat. – Anthony Strain

5. Cee-Lo Green – “Fuck You” (Elektra)
(Single; from The Ladykiller)
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Cee-Lo Green reminds me of a guy I met in a psych ward once. He was big, he was sexy, he wore bright-colored suits, and he was continuously denied phone privileges for breaking into song, mostly belting righteous streams of profanity to anyone who looked at him funny. No one knew what his fucking problem was. I’ve always wondered what happened to that guy, I guess now I know. – Chris Morgan

4. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – “Round and Round” (4AD)
(Single; from Before Today)
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The ridiculously wonderful and wonderfully ridiculous “Round and Round,” is a piece of music fastened together by the sheer will of its creators. An insidiously compulsion-forming disco bassline drags you into some sad, soft rock, sensitive man lyrical turns, happily, gleefully, and things get stranger, genuinely surprising, the deeper you venture in. It is a song with all the grooves and hooks that make a hit, but the pieces have been cut away from unexpected corners of the musical vaults and arranged in a serendipitous clusterfuck of referentiality and a great many of the small things that make some songs better than other – and the big things, like a giant, sun-saturated California singalong chorus that aligns with the bass-heavy verses in a fantastical and infinitely repeatable godlike asymmetry. – Tyler Parks

3. Robyn – “Dancing On My Own” (Konichiwa/Cherrytree-Interscope)
(Single; from Body Talk Pt. 1)
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As Brad Goodman might say, Robyn Carlsson has a Ph.D. in pain. Since 2005, the best of the Swedish singer’s singles, from “Be Mine!” to “With Every Heartbeat,” have been built on a foundation of disco beats and heartbreak. That didn’t change with “Dancing On My Own,” the lead single of her first Body Talk installment, it was just improved through a thick, syrupy bassline and a chorus that stands as the most transcendent moment in Robyn’s discography. That isn’t to say the lead-in verses aren’t dazzling on their own, with our misfortune-stricken heroine describing with anguish, “stilettos on broken bottles/I’m spinning around in circles.” Still, when that chorus arrives, it’s not the sound of misery seeking company, but a determined spirit. Robyn may be wounded when she sings “I’m in the corner watching you kiss her,” but when she repeats the refrain “I keep dancing on my own,” she’s letting those wounds heal the best way she knows how: by letting loose and just getting down. – Jeff Terich

2. LCD Soundsystem – “Dance Yrself Clean” (DFA-Virgin)
(from This Is Happening)
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More than any song on This is Happening, “Dance Yrself Clean” delivers the lyrical goods. James Murphy, through both what he sings and how he sings (howls) it, is funny, poignant, confused and confusing, but throughout captivating. And the music…as Oscar Wilde put it, “Talent borrows, genius steals,” and this is definitely a case of a genius theft, as the song is structured around the beat and off-kilter groove of The Pool’s 1982 B-side, “Jamaica Resting.” But Murphy is upfront about his appropriation, making no attempt to mask the source material through small changes, but rather building up something completely different around a sound ripped out of the past-as mentioned, through his voice and words, but also through the communal “ahhhh-ahhhhing,” and the heavy synths that kick in about three minutes in and call for some serious head-nodding and body-swaying for the song’s remainder. And damn it, there is just something endearing about Murphy urging us to dance ourselves clean, something that encapsulates what continues to be essential and inimitable about LCD Soundsystem. – Tyler Parks

1. Big Boi – “Shutterbugg” (Def Jam)
(Single; from Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
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Every time I listen to this song, it feels like the first time. No joke; I’m convinced it’s impossible to not start bobbin’ your head as soon as that bubbling, talkboxed a cappella bassline drops. Smooth and raucous at once, the in-your-face wall-of-bass production from Scott Stortch and Big Boi is nothing short of monumental and has all the makings of another classic for the annals of hip-hop history. Three Stacks is rapping again now and then, but on “Shutterbugg” Big Boi reminds you with gusto that he never really stopped. His quick, forceful delivery is effortless, tying together playful humor and real talk with slick wordplay and typical charisma (“And across the border the Esé’s are getting smarter / They got flour for tortillas and lettuce for enchiladas / If you follow, wink wink / No doubt we don’t speak / In a blink, them folks could have you sleeping in the clink“). The music video will also forever be inextricably entwined with this jam, at least in my mind: Tron Suit dancers, a towering wall of Dixie cups, Big Boi scaling a mountain of shoes, The Most Valuable Puppet Band, a Dungeon Fam cameo, AND a Technicolor Cadillac? The list goes on and on and on — can’t forget to mention that epic Soul II Soul reference — but to make a loooong story short, “Shutterbugg” is simply one in a series of perfect singles from a member of OutKast. – Derek Emery

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