24. Shygirl — Firefly
The lead single from Shygirl’s debut album Nymph, “Firefly” is a bold campaign opener, one that is unafraid to say readjust your expectations right the fuck now–or else! Prior to Nymph, Shygirl was known primarily for her dark, grimy, sometimes raucous, almost always raunchy bangers, the kinds of tracks epitomized by tracks like “Slime” and “BDE.” The contrast between her older work and the breezy “Firefly” is a sharp one, but it’s a masterstroke in changing lanes.
That Shygirl, the London rapper-singer-songwriter-DJ neé Blane Muise, suddenly had a track in her repertoire that could be described as light or maybe even, God forbid, summery, took a lot of fans by surprise. The author of this write-up included! I remember being a little confused and a lot underwhelmed. I actually went to find my comment on the Popheads thread–I described it as “not 100% there for me” and merely “cute.” Eek! Sometime later the trippy fiber-optic fantasy of “Firefly” clicked into place. The perfect little loop of that deliciously cheap-sounding synth guitar? The twinkly flourishes? The way the “I guess I need to hear this truth this time” refrain glides over garage beats? It’s soothing, fun, and profoundly addictive. (Even if it takes a second to kick in.) Ultimately, “Firefly” is the perfect introduction to the lush world of Nymph, and absolutely one of my favorite tracks of the year. — u/wholahaybrown
23. Soccer Mommy — Shotgun
For the follow-up to her highly-acclaimed second LP Color Theory, a gloomy album colored by bigger, brighter sounds, Sophie Allison / Soccer Mommy surprised fans with one hell of a love song. Shotgun expands Sophie’s departure from being bedroom pop’s biggest open secret to embracing a more ambitious, polished “studio band” sound, now with the help of one of pop and indie music’s most versatile producers, Oneohtrix Point Never (yup, the guy who co-produced Dawn FM). Through the moody synths and all the grungy guitars and distorted riffs that 90s alt-rock nostalgia could provide, Sophie weaves an ode to being helplessly in love that would only make you wanna say “damn girl, get up???” Make no mistake though, on the rest of her noticeably darker album Sometimes, Forever, she’s determined to move away from the sentimental melancholy of her youth and fully embrace head-on the darkness in her life. “Uppers and my heart never meshed / I hated coming down / But this feels the same without the bad things”, she even warns us on Shotgun itself. But just this once, on her lead single, Sophie says fuck it. Like all of us (sorry aces!), she is simply powerless to the embarrassing, dizzying way that love comes at us at any given moment, no warnings. Whenever someone miraculously responds to the rhetorical “Who want me?” question in our heads, like a bullet in a shotgun, aren’t we’re all just waiting, practically begging, to go off?
P.S. Shotguns don’t have bullets, they have shells — u/bespectacIed
21. The Weeknd — Less Than Zero
Less Than Zero is a brilliant standalone song, but I think really comes to life as the finale and climax of Dawn FM. The sugary sweet track comes at the end of a long and tiresome tunnel into the afterlife, full of drugs and cheating and other things you can probably see in The Idol this summer. Much of the album is about toxicity and addiction, and Less Than Zero has one of my favourite approaches of all the tracks being about how much can you truly protect those you love from yourself, and at the end of the day do you deserve all that you will get back. I adore the lyric “I couldn’t save you from my darkest truth of all”, meaning that as wrong as he knows it is, he loves the hurt, he revels in the pain and the darkness.
The whole tone of the song is oddly accepting, he is not harboring any resentment for being left or being hated, he knows he deserves it, but accepts it. It’s a brilliant almost joyous track and a fantastic beat to end the album on. — Awkward_King
19. Let’s Eat Grandma — Happy New Year
She said “I’d want the Synth”, and the Synth she had.
Happy New Year is one of the leading singles released for British band Let’s Eat Grandma’s third studio album, Two Ribbons. The band released a strong candidate for SOTY when it had barely hit us that the New Year had already started: dropped on Apple Music on the first day of 2022, and on other platforms two days later, on January 3th.
The song is probably the most accessible of their album; filled with bright, delicious and almost violent synths, contrasted with nostalgic lyrics and sugary hooks; it all comes together to make a perfect, addictive combination. Like a Charli XCX song written by Adele. Happy New Year is an strong pop song tingled with the influence of Hyper Pop, and strong, emotional lyrics about friendship.
A strong friendship, breaking apart and then mended. The song was written by one of the band members, Rosa Walton, after a breakdown between her and the other band member, Jenny Hollingworth. An imagery of ice igloos, bubble baths and snow globes permeate the song, picturing the strongest of friendships in the coldest of the Winter.
The final chorus hits with euphoric synths celebrating among fireworks, marking not just one of the best musical moments of 2022, but also symbolizing that you have a friend: the kind of friend that, no matter the problems, differences and hardships, will always be there to be the first to wish you a Happy New Year, as you enjoy together the sparks in the sky. — u/Jexan13
18. Rina Sawayama — Hold The Girl
Hold the Girl is the thesis statement to Rina Sawayama’s second album. It was the first song Rina wrote for the album that shares its name, a product of post-therapy reflection. It speaks to themes of identity and trauma that resonate throughout her music but casts these in the light of self-rediscovery and reaching inside to make peace with your inner child.
Hold the Girl could be a downtempo, sombre track but here Rina makes it powerful and anthemic. While the lyrics capture feelings of guilt and sadness at the thought of having neglected your inner child, the grandiose, dramatic production feels like a reclamation of identity. With a music video to match, the song urges a cathartic, physical expression of emotion.
Hold the Girl traverses a wide range of musical influences, from the strings in the intro reminiscent of Like a Prayer to the two-step beat that carries through the song. Rina has a habit of eclectic choices in her music, and here they work together to evoke strong feelings of nostalgia that also take us back to our younger selves.
Hold the Girl is a bold, ambitious track that exemplifies Rina’s artistic vision. It urges us to forge a path forward, acknowledging the pain of the past but making peace with it by finding healing and validation within ourselves. — theburningundead
14. Jessie Ware — Free Yourself
I must admit, this review wasn’t written until April 29, 2023. 284 days have passed since Jessie Ware released ‘Free Yourself,’ a triumphant anthem that showcases her immense strength as a dance artist. And in that time, ‘That! Feels Good!’ was released to the masses and broke multiple /r/popheads records (Sorry, Taylor. I don’t make the rules).
‘Free Yourself’ places the song’s meaning right in the name. Letting loose under flashing lights and grinding up on some twink on the dancefloor is the obvious message; however, I feel like there’s much more to be said. In my opinion, making this track the lead single was intentional. ‘Free Yourself’ feels like a celebration on the heels of ‘What’s Your Pleasure?,’ her prior dance record that better established Ware as a critical darling and a gay icon. She has mentioned in multiple interviews about her floundering career post ‘Glasshouse,’ an album that I personally love but didn’t seem to resonate with anyone. Following this, Ware replaced her team and started fresh on the sound she was born to create — sexy, sultry, drunk wine lady disco. I picture this reinvention as something she would consider freeing, and she’s certainly proud of her career’s new direction. I’m proud of her, too. — Mudkip
11. Lizzo — About Damn Time
It’s bad bitch o’clock, yeah, it’s thick-thirty
Following the release of Lizzo’s comeback single “Rumors” featuring Cardi B in 2021, which in some aspects didn’t quite reach the expectations for a comeback following the massive success of Lizzo’s first studio album Cuz I Love You, “About Damn Time” had a lot riding on it and boy did they deliver. The lead single of Lizzo’s second studio album Special quickly rose to TikTok fame, becoming one of the biggest hits of the year and Lizzo’s second number-one hit single.
Right off the bat over a funky bass line, the opening line of “About Damn Time” sets the tone for yet another trademark uplifting Lizzobanger that’s very much on brand for Lizzo. And while “About Damn Time” may not have necessarily been breaking any new ground sonically or lyrically as far as the current disco trend goes, it is its irresistibly smooth production and above all, Lizzo’s beaming personality that makes the song soar over its other shortcomings. It’s really no wonder that a song this carefully produced became a juggernaut hit, you could say that it really was about damn time. — u/skargardin
10. Carly Rae Jepsen — Surrender My Heart
“Surrender my Heart” ends up being one of Carly’s most familiar cuts on The Loneliest Time, going straight back to what many people liked the most about EMOTION: unabashed 80s influences, its chugging basslines and glittering keys a shorthand for universal catharsis. This time round, it’s maybe more subtle — the pace seems to settle at something just shy of its actual tempo, and the melodies are built with more restraint than the untethered shouts of “Run Away With Me”. The spirit remains though and she even manages to sneak in a profanity, “I’m tryin’ not to fuck this up”, practically a mission statement for many a Carly song.
“Surrender my Heart” is therefore another great entry in the lexicon of Carly songs about longing. You sometimes imagine that Carly doesn’t believe in love, rather the idea of love, all chases and vulnerability and rejections. She’s certainly not run out of ways to make us feel the way she does: here’s to many more songs like it. — Rai
9. Rina Sawayama — This Hell
Rina comes in the great legacy of pop chameleons before her, like Madonna and Lady Gaga, where eclectic and campy genre-hopping has only made their music and image more signature in sound, their ascent to pop stardom more obvious for people to see. “This Hell” certainly has no qualms being the song it is: a shamelessly fun country-pop romp firmly in the vein of, and actually referencing, Shania Twain, a stone’s throw away from something like “That Don’t Impress Me Much”.
People may forget that even amongst the fanbases of artists like Gaga, the radical swings into particular genre outings have divided and alienated (see Joanne, see the glam theatricality of Born This Way which “This Hell” approaches in spirit). Their saving grace has always been that for the likes of Gaga, you don’t ever really have to worry about the core of a pop song ever being anything but catchy. Rina accomplishes the same with ease here.
“This Hell” almost becomes a pop Trojan horse. Pleasant country twangs and cheesy guitars are only there to complement what is actually an incredibly fun and well-crafted chorus (it’s really not far-fetched to imagine Shania Twain singing it, and it sounding believably like a good Shania song). Memorable (and memeable) moments litter the lyrics (the Paris Hilton “that’s hot” moment, of course the “Fuck what they did to Britney, to Lady Di’, and Whitney” moment) but the unabashed rebellious queer joy of the song comes across with or without them. Queer existence is inherently political, Rina claims — and we’re all having a fucking blast too. — Rai
8. Beyoncé — VIRGO’S GROOVE
The crown jewel of RENAISSANCE is arguable. Is it “Alien Superstar” and its mission statement for the album? Is it climactic closer “Summer Renaissance” that samples Donna Summer’s iconic hit “I Feel Love” in a practically ecstatic way? My personal vote goes for the physical centrepiece of the album with “Virgo’s Groove”. Channeling both classic Beyoncé, contemporary Beyoncé and now a postmodern Beyoncé out there in the throes of celebrating dance music, “Virgo’s Groove” is the most exuberant and self-indulgent cut off the album, and is all the better for it. Other parts of the album seem to speed by at breakneck pace, but there’s something wonderful about how carefree the full 6 minutes of this track are executed, in the vein of some late 70s funk track given an extended mix with noodling instrumentals. Of course, it somehow feels shorter than many of the TikTok-core sub-2 minute songs anyway, and resisted to some extent the obvious TikTok-ification of a select few other RENAISSANCE songs. The lyrics are sensual and honestly incredibly sweet in amongst the horniness, “Baby, come over / Come be alone with me tonight” coexisting with the likes of “Motorboat, baby, spin around”. But, really, the pinnacle of the song is in its final stretch, “You’re the only love of my life” on repeat as Beyoncé does a series of runs and ad-libs so natural and at times supernatural that you simply have to assume love really can be that transcendental.
Do Virgos deserve “Virgo’s Groove”? Maybe just a little. — Rai
7. ROSALÍA — SAOKO
Listen to the layers, or the lack of them: for all of Rosalía’s frantic vision of some hybrid Latin-Spanish motorsport extravaganza, she has a surprisingly minimal touch on her music. Frenetic and gasoline-fuelled, yes, but immaculately crafted too, and intentional in a way that harkens back to her classically-trained flamenco roots even as her music drifts away from it. At points in “SAOKO”, the song is barely more than just her voice and a single bass synth. An almost straight-out-the-box reggaeton beat carries the energy of the track, but there’s a real masterstroke in just those two layers. The grinding industrial bass harkens to some of the more interesting modern projects across electronic and hip-hop music, and her vocals are processed in a subtle way as if listening to Rosalía through a slightly dodgy telephone connection between its microdelays over certain syllables and warbled, bitcrushed dissonance. A simple two parts milked for all their rhythmic and melodic potential, no ensemble of flamenco claps needed. Of course, there’s other oddities in the track in its vocal samples and a free jazz interlude (or just interruption?), but Rosalía has always managed to get down to a song’s musical core. Saoco, a Puerto Rican exclamation of concurrence and acclaim, very much also relates directly to this idea of rhythm with meaning in the salsa music scene where it might be used to talk about the groove. Much has been said of Rosalía’s dabbling with Latin American musical traditions, but it’s difficult to accuse her of half-assing it, that’s for sure. The homage to Daddy Yankee in its refrain is clever, but its lyrics regarding transformation make it clear that she has a very specific idea of her music, even if ironically that’s always been a cornerstone of her musical attitude and not just a recent change. — Rai
6. MUNA — What I Want
Over the past few years, MUNA have cemented themselves as pioneers of the queer experience. In many cases, that’s been by operating in the mode of Big Gay Sad, one can only imagine how many emotional spirals their music has soundtracked. Take a listen to their new NPR Tiny Desk, introducing Saves The World favourite “Stayaway” as “the saddest song you have maybe ever heard in your life” (spoiler: they’re not that wrong).
It’s only recently that the band have dabbled in the other end of the spectrum so blatantly. A title like “What I Want” could easily be for a song about longing for an ex or some other traumatically gay emotional experience, but we actually get in its stead debauchery, a celebration of drugs and sex and alcohol with no shame involved. “I want that girl right over there to wanna date me”, MUNA band leader Katie Gavin sings over staccato synths. There’s a real catwalk energy to it too, even though the song is otherwise evoking somewhere much dingier than that. It’s all highly over-the-top as if the camera shutter sound effects or lyrics like “I want the fireworks, I want the chemistry” didn’t alert you. This is camp. The characters they’re playing are larger than life, but it would be amiss to call it inauthentic. When Gavin sings “I want to dance in the middle of a gay bar”, it’s a great moment. What’s more gay than beating around the bush (metaphorically, of course)? For them to go against that impulse and spell it out and say it out loud feels like a moment of queer celebration, to make it visible with no questions asked. — Rai
5. Beyoncé — CUFF IT
“Cuff It” might take the title for one of Beyoncé’s most accessible songs, and yet one of the most unabashedly horny: not in a nudge nudge wink wink way, and honestly not even in a “Blow” way where you could try to feign ignorance, but in a “Can I sit on top of you?” way. Honestly, good for Beyoncé and good for us who get to indulge in that horniness. It seems surreal that we have every demographic doing TikTok trends to the chorus of this song, often badly, but you know, it’s genuinely fun to see people having fun to Beyoncé…having fun? More than anything, it feels like it’s been a few years since Beyoncé has really revelled in something a little bit unserious even if her artistry in the meantime has elevated to soaring levels.
In a Top 10 firmly celebrating queer joy, Beyoncé fully commits to the bit, and indeed exploring the intersection between black culture and queer culture firmly. The old-school R&B and disco-funk of “Cuff It” plays it entirely straight, because there really isn’t a reason not to with a song this good. The-Dream on production feels effortless and Niles Rodgers lends his signature touch to the song, one of the most convincing times he’s guested on a modern song with a warmth that feels superior to even something like “Get Lucky” which maybe never considered the cultural context of music like this as Beyoncé does so thoughtfully. Does anyone remember “Hymn for the Weekend”? Apparently the lyrics to that were originally “Drinks from me” rather than “Drink from me” before it got changed out of perhaps embarrassment to give to Beyoncé, from club banger to faux-spiritual celebration. We all knew Beyoncé would have had it in her. If a Coldplay mention at the end of a writeup of a Renaissance has upset you, make your way to the nearest party and go request “Cuff It”. — Rai
4. Beyoncé — ALIEN SUPERSTAR
Exactly how many Moments can you have on an album? Throughout her career, Beyoncé has claimed that there is no limit. We have space for multitudes. This song was certainly at least partially responsible for the album’s resonance in our heads throughout 2022.
How many Moments can you have on a song? There is no limit. We have space for multitudes. From the instantly memeable interspersed samples of Kim Cooper exclaiming “Unique!” samples, to the “Please do not be alarmed, remain calm” intro, sampled from Foremost Poets’ “Moonraker”, a legendary record for deep house, and the fact that Beyoncé’s vocals feel like a tribute to ballroom MC-ing (“category: bad bitch”), Beyoncé packs in a surprising amount of reverence for history for dance music into these short snippets that have also contributed to the sheer memorability of the song. That’s not to mention the “I’m Too Sexy” interpolation, which feels ridiculous on paper but treated practically with the same reverence as the other samples across the track.
Indeed, this feels like the moment on the album most indebted to ballroom culture, which the album of course plays great tribute to. “Unicorn is the uniform you put on,” Beyoncé says, and you’re inclined to believe that she is in fact capable of bringing counterculture to the masses. Another sample on the song, an interview excerpt from Barbara Ann Teer, the founder of the National Black Theatre, “We dress a certain way, we walk a certain way / We talk a certain way, we paint a certain way” lays out a mission statement. Her celebration of the culture feels lived-in perhaps just because of how many people who resonate with Beyoncé have lived that experience (she has oft been the icon of turning self-empowerment into group empowerment), and to have such a huge name celebrate it feels in many ways like an important moment even in the form of a viral pop hit. — Rai
3. Ethel Cain — American Teenager
In Ethel Cain’s rise to cult stardom, she’s managed to embody many dualities. A Florida native, with hot sticky Southern Gothic aesthetics giving way to cold Midwest ambience. Hayden Anhedönia, the person, versus Ethel Cain, the character. A wildly prolific shitposter online that seems worlds away from the themes covered in her music: poverty, religion, death, toxic relationships, generational trauma and suffocating Americana oppression. A bastion of alternative imagery by all standards, and yet somehow a popstar in the making.
Popstars that have straddled the line between indie darling and commercial icon are obviously not uncommon at this point: Florence Welch, one of Ethel’s own idols, was a witchy pastoral English example of this when she came onto the scene over a decade ago, and comparisons are perhaps unavoidable to Lana del Rey, who some may consider a West Coast counterpart to Ethel. And yet in comparison, Ethel Cain is somehow enacting on music noticeably more, well, commercially unfriendly for lack of a better descriptor. Listen to any of Preacher’s Daughter, and the series of gothic slowcore largely 5-minute-plus ballads, baked with dusty reverb-drenched gloom and doom makes even an album like Florence’s Ceremonials look like a Katy Perry singles compilation in comparison. It’s maybe not surprising for someone who hadn’t even been remotely brought up on pop music, but it makes it even more surprising that she manifests the singularity of “American Teenager” moments into the album, a glistening beacon of pop that flips that musical formula on its head.
You wonder if there’s an entirely different mode Ethel might be operating in based off this song. There are hints of this anthemic pop catharsis lurking in some songs elsewhere on Preacher’s Daughter — the sweet country balladry of “Thoroughfare” or in the rather lovely refrain of “Sun Bleached Flies” swimming somewhere in its meandering runtime — but “American Teenager” commits to it so fully that you’d wonder if it were being played for laughs were it not so totally authentic-feeling. Ethel’s vision of America — bleachers, kids in the military, whiskey and Jesus — seems to come alive electrically set against the Springsteenian guitars and vague 80s stylings that have invited comparison to some of Taylor Swift’s most stomping moments. Her impressive voice sounds stadium-sized yet intensely intimate, and frankly the main chorus is so absurdly well-crafted, it seems to have its own gravitational pull. There’s even something to be said about a comparison to Lorde, another young artist with a radically different perspective on pop music and an emphasis on the disfranchisement of their generation (at least in philosophy if not in sound). Andrew Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World gets referenced in the video for “American Teenager”: the subject of the painting, paralysed yet grasping life by the reins looks to the landscape beyond, a duality of physical limitations and a psychological freedom far beyond that. It only seems fitting that Ethel sees herself in that painting’s American legacy. She manages to find her own lane at the end of it all; her stardom is unsurprising even amongst all the contradictions, or perhaps because of them. — Rai
2. Carly Rae Jepsen — Talking to Yourself
People really cannot get over Carly doing 80s songs. EMOTION had the hits. Dedicated had the hits. Turns out, even on an album where Carly has specifically moved away from just the aesthetics of the 80s as an overarching sound, we still manage to gravitate to that unholy decade. Carly does it well of course, so who are we to judge?
“Talking To Yourself” actually does end up sounding springier than a lot of EMOTION’s most overtly 80s moments, taking inspiration from new wave and rendered in a more contemporary way than the nocturnal yearning of her earlier hits. It’s weird to say for Carly of course, but her modus operandi has always been relatively traditional songwriting and “Talking To Yourself” goes for something a bit trendier than usual — like a glam Dua Lipa song as comparisons have been made — to genuine success. It suits her, especially when Carly’s inherent theatricality in vocal delivery (or the fact she can’t help but put a roaring guitar solo in there) makes it still feel so distinctly Carly. — Rai
1. Carly Rae Jepsen — The Loneliest Time (feat. Rufus Wainwright)
Surprisingly, Carly has never quite topped the recent additions to this list. When we backdated to 2015, “Run Away with Me” fittingly was the runaway winner, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s understandable why Carly’s presence has sometimes been overshadowed in other years. Big juggernauts like Dua and Ariana cement their place in the industry by exposure alone, while the likes of Charli XCX and Rina Sawayama are seen as the vanguard in the evolution of pop; it’s tempting to think that Carly’s cult appeal of EMOTION was a fluke in some way, a singular oddity amongst typical pop consumers and critics alike. Think of Carly in the ‘pop landscape’ and what becomes clear is that her music in many ways exists totally outside of it in the traditional sense: unconcerned with pop trends (in either following them or being iconoclastic), although very much not a pop outsider either. Sure, The Loneliest Time as an album branches out from the 80s stylings that she’s relied on, but it comes off as just a natural expansion of palette rather than a response to overexposure of 80s sounds across the pop industry. Even many of the stylistic bluffs that preceded the album like “Western Wind” and “Beach House” lend Carly the air of a pop legacy act with an expansive catalogue of earworms rather than an intentionally diverse album: Carly is simply making the pop she wants to make, with little reason needed beyond that.
“The Loneliest Time” epitomises much of this. It’s hard to imagine such a wildly traditional pop song from anyone else in the industry besides Carly, and certainly not delivered with the sincerity and familiarity that has afforded Carly her oddly frozen-in-time place amongst the pop artists we know and love. There’s a real classic vibe to the whole affair, with its featherlight disco stylings tinged with musical theatre — Rufus Wainwright makes for an ideal duet partner too, Genre and influence barely register here though, not in the same way that many pop artists have looked to releasing ‘disco’ songs so much more obviously for instance. The song reminds you of something more fundamental, which is Carly’s capacity to write truly timeless pop melodies
Don’t let the TikTok viral trend trick you: this is not Carly writing to the whims of a quickly changing industry, it’s merely a reminder that Carly was there when we came up with these things in the first place. It’s been over a decade since everyone was making webcam videos to “Call Me Maybe” after all. Do not cite the deep magic. Besides, the song is over 4 minutes long which might be considered extreme by today’s pop standards, and Carly seems gloriously unconcerned about it on the track. It barely feels like a top song of 2022: some nagging earworm of a song you know from a radio station your parents played in the car, maybe it was some song from a musical you watched as a kid, maybe it’s just that time barely registers when Carly’s yet again singing about longing and seeking affection as the most universal human experience. — Rai
“Carly Rae Jepsen — The Loneliest Time (feat. Rufus Wainwright)”
Intro & Honorable Mentions | 101–76 | 75–51 | 50–26 | 25–1 | Full List
