20: Peaches - Milk and Bone
Guilty as charged: my ears poke up in a Pavlovian manner any time I hear a single note synth bass line. With a bouncy melody and Grimes-like vocals, this was a lovely tune.
19: No Geography - Chemical Brothers
They just keep ticking along and producing euphoric, catchy dance music. I heard this on a Netflix Christmas movie of all places, and was blown away by how euphoric and fresh it sounded. Perenial.
18: Peace to All Freaks - Of Montreal
This is the kind of song that my wife hears and says "oh, this is so your kind of music". Perky, earnest synth pop with lush vocals.
17: Vagabond - Steve Gunn
A fantastic slice of folk rock that draws you in and takes you on a beguiling little journey. I love to sing along to music whilst on my motorbike, and the outro to this song was a particular favourite this year.
16: Starcourt - Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein
The soundtracks to Stranger Things have been consistently brilliant over the last few years, and this particular track from the season 3 soundtrack was a stand out. Instantly evocative of a time that many us don't even remember, its catchy melody instantly captures the irrepresible bounciness and joy of a misspent 80's youth in shopping malls- albeit one that's really just a front for supernatural monsters.
15: Parachute - Caroline Polachek
This one was a recommendation from NPR's New Music Friday that wouldn't normally float my boat. I absent mindedly added it to my regular playlist and thought little of it at first, but repeated listens revealed a beautiful melody and soaring vocal performance that managed to be simultaneously powerful and ethereal. A grower.
14: Now That I Found You - Carly Rae Jepsen
Ah, CRJ. She continues to make insanely catchy, euphoric pop music with choruses so big they have their own orbits. Irresistable to anyone with a scrap of joy in their soul.
13: Keep on Runnin - Sheer Mag
Singlehandedly redeeming rock music in 2019. Demands your attention from the first bar of the bass all the way to the closing guitar heroics. Grubby and glorious.
12: Summon the Fire - The Comet is Coming
Someone once described ska music as "what a 13 year old hears in his head when he orders mozarella sticks". In the nicest possible way, this is what I imagine. It's an absolute roller coaster of a song- you hold on tight as it throws you this way and that at breakneck speed, and when you do finally make it to the end with a stupefied grin, your first thought is to get back on and do it all again.
11: Curls - Bibio
"And now, for something completely different". Pretty much the complete sonic opposite of The Comet is Coming, Curls is a lovely and delicate folk with beautiful vocal harmonies and instrumentation. It's a timeless, sepia-toned balm of a song.
10: Good as Hell - Lizzo
Absolute BANGER. It's easy to see why Lizzo has been so popular this year when you hear this song, with unapologetically defiant lyrics and an unforgettable piano hook. So infectious that not even an utterly unncessary remix with Ariana Grande could ruin it.
9: Happens to the Heart - Leonard Cohen
Given that You Want it Darker was such a perfect epitaph to Leonard Cohen's life and career, I was understandably concerned when I heard there was to be a posthumous record- what possible scraps could be left? As it turns out, it's an incredibly moving album, perhaps best summed up by Happens to the Heart. It's quintessential Cohen; Spanish guitar, melancholic melodies and a croaky vocal speaking pure, unfiltered poetry. An unexpected triumph.
8: Sad Day - FKA Twigs
I really loved FKA Twigs' brilliant album Magdalene, but couldn't quite put my finger on why. What genre was it, even? Then I heard someone compare her to Kate Bush and everything slotted into place. The record is fantastic and well worth checking out, but this song is a particular stand out. Dark, beguiling, and unforgetable.
8: Paramour - Anna Meredith
In the nicest possible way, this song is NUTS. Much like with Summon the Fire, this song straps you to a rocket and takes you for an indescribable joyride. A delightfully bonkers assault on the senses. Tubas? Wailing guitars? A single-shot music video on a Lego train? Yes, yes, yes.
7: I Said I Wouldn't Write This Song - Black Belt Eagle Scout
A riff that instantly buries itself in your head and a haunting vocal.
6: The Best - Self Esteem
Criminally underrated. I think I discovered this one through a recommendation on Spotify and fell in love with its intriguing take on pop straight away. It was only later that I discovered that Self Esteem is Rebecca Taylor from the lovely folk group Slow Club, who I was absolutely obsessed with way back in the Myspace days; a completely unexpected link which I think shows the depth of her musical talent. The album (Compliments Please) is also well worth your time.
4: I Hope You're Very Happy Together - Art Brut
Don't call it a comeback. Reunions don't always work out for the best (particularly for 00's indie bands), but Art Brut were on top form for Wham! Bang! Pow! Let's Rock Out! At the centre of the storm is Eddie Argos, as charismatic and hilarious as ever. Besides being an absolute banger, this post-breakup song is full of hilarious, incisive lyrics. From "the past is a different country/and I don't want any postcards reminding me" to the delightfully petty chorus of "I hope you're very happy together/And if you're not, that's even better!" Welcome back.
3: Far From Born Again - Alex Cameron
A delightful slice of pop. The whole Miami Memory album is fantastic, but this is a particular stand-out. The melody will be stuck in your head for days, and if it wasn't for the fact that it's about championing sex workers it'd be playing on every radio in the land.
2: Hole in the Floor - Peakes
I must have listened to this song for about a month straight. A perfect bit of bouncy but dark synthpop. It's my favourite kind of song; simultaneously downbeat and anthemic. Incidentally, they also do an absolutely spellbinding cover of Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill.
1: Queuejumper - The Divine Comedy
Whilst most of the list doesn't have any real order (after all, who's to say that number 9 is *objectively* better than number 12?), this is most certainly a number 1 song of the year for me. I knew almost nothing about The Divine Comedy prior to this track, but from the first bouncing drum beat I was on board. It's both instantly familiar and unashamedly odd- how many other songs are there about being stuck in traffic, or that play the main riff on the marimba? Sung from the perspective of a joyously self-obsessed sociopath negotiating his way through a traffic jam, you can't help but sing along: "I jumped the queue 'cus I'm smarter than you!". If there were any justice in the world, this song would be held in the same pantheon as esoteric pop classics like Mr. Blue Sky or Bohemian Rhapsody. For now, it's ours.
Before I go, some further recommendations:
Album of the Year: Norman Fucking Rockwell by Lana Del Rey
I'm primarily a singles person. A song demands your attention and has three minutes to say what it has to say; while this might be a sacriligious opinion, albums generally don't have the same pull for me. Let's be honest, most decent LPs could be whittled down to stellar EPs if the artists and labels had the cojones. For me to like an album, it's got to be strong from start to finish and build a world for itself that makes it worth more than the sum of its parts. NFR does just that; yes the songs are great one after another, but you're also drawn inside the very particular mise en scene that Lana Del Rey and her collaborators set up for your entertainment. Triumphant.
Honourable mentions: Thanks for the Dance by Leonard Cohen was an unexpected delight and stands shoulder to shoulder with any other record he produced during his lifetime.
I loved Magdalene by FKA Twigs for the same reasons that I loved the Lana Del Rey record- it seized your attention through intriguing songs, but works as a continguous whole due to building and stoking an unforgetable ambience.
Similarly, The Undivided Five by A Winged Victory for the Sullen was a wonderful panoramic ambient-ish record that I thought was excellent. At first I would put it on in the background, but it was so good I'd find myself stopping to think "Oh, that's nice. That's lovely. That's great too". Kind of Sigur Ros-ish in places, it's definitely worth checking out.
Artist of the Year: Big Thief
In a world where artists are often on a cycle of releasing an album, touring it for two years, then releasing another album- huzzah for Big Thief. They put out not one but two great albums this year. It's not a case of quantity over quality; both stand up as solid indie rock records with enough more than enough to say. Take the first hook to get me in: the title track of the first record, U.F.O.F.:
What is that melody? What key is this? I could have listened for hours, and I did. There are so many good songs on these two LPs that I'd be here all day recommending tracks, so I'll just leave with one final pick and an exhortation: listen to Big Thief.
