Top Songs of 2011: The Top Ten

I don’t have time to do the Full 50 and let’s be honest: People really only care about the Top Ten anyway!

Honorable Mentions:

Polish Girl by Neon Indian

The Morning by the Weeknd

Hanging On by Active Child

 

10.Carmencita by Rob Roy

“Carmencita.”

R&B is making a massive comeback and I love it. It has long been one of my favorite genres but it had admittedly gone stale since R.Kelly and Prince left. Thankfully someone smart realized “Bass Music would work perfectly with a genre focused around a bass line”.  When that BUMP BUMP BUMP kicks in you just feel it. Rob Roy uses that feeling to evoke this raw sensuality without ever being explicit. The song is as passionate and sexual as any song the Dream has made without the over usage of verbose bordering on tasteless exposition. That he kinda raps a bit of it in this jagged free form is just icing.

9.Another Naive Individual Glorifying Greed and Encouraging Racism by BIG KRIT

“Tell them black folk: I don’t wanna be another Nigga.”

BIG KRIT currently holds the “Best Rapper Alive” crown and its quite funny how many people will read this and not know it. He combines the Trunk Rattling Southern Sound we love so much and combines it with a raw, visceral honesty and intelligence that we rarely see from that area of the map. He attacks subjects like Racism with a fiery simplicity; there’s no symbolism here, just a man sick of being something he doesn’t want to be.  What catapults KRIT into the upper echelons is the fact that he makes all these beats. It’s crazy that he can be so talented.

8. 1+1 by Beyonce

Back in 2000, Outkast made it mainstream on their landmark “Stankonia” album. Released on that album were singles So Fresh and So Clean and Mrs. Jackson, wildly successful rap turned pop songs. And yet, with little to no fanfare or radio play, B.O.B was released on the same album. One of the 5 or so best rap songs of all time was passed over like so common addition to the album. Why the mass populous chooses some songs over others is baffling because it has happened once again. Every other song from Beyonce’s 4 album has been a massive success and received acclaim from pop charts and critics alike and yet 1+1 barely made a splash. THIS IS THE BEST BEYONCE SONG EVER. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING. This is better than Single Ladies. Better than Crazy In Love. Forget about those “Prince” Guitars and yet another masterfully crafted beat. What makes this song swell is a pure, unadulterated honesty from someone who has no reason to be. Beyonce has spent the better part of the 21st Century preaching independence and feminism and here she is giving herself away. All of it. It’s like watching someone mature in front of you. This is a song that wouldn’t work in the hands of anyone else.

7. Midnight City by M83

The coolest beat of 2011. Period. There’s nothing more I can say that EVERY OTHER indie publication hasn’t already said.

6. Video Games by Lana Del Rey

“I heard that you like the bad girls, honey?”

This song came out of fucking NOWHERE and took over my world back in August. It’s just one of those sultry, sexy pop hits that resonates with everyone. This is “Teenage Dreams” for the musically inclined: Lana Del Rey’s voice and songwriting make Katy Perry’s look childish. The way she swoons over the track so effortlessly. The Way the beat rises when “It’s You, It’s You” begins, the way she takes these personal moments and makes them feel so universal, it’s just splendid to listen to.

5. Lindesfarne II by James Blake

“Beacon don’t fly too high”

This song has about as many lyrics as “Call On Me”. There is nothing complex about Lindesfarne II, but that’s what makes James Blake so startlingly remarkable. With the simplest of ideas and the most perfectly planned out moments of silence to let things settle in, James Blake creates an atmosphere unseen since Burial’s “Untrue” album. Everything just sounds in place, almost creepily so. His gorgeous falsetto is given intravenous shots of robotic distillation and yet never wavers in its beauty. The ultimate highlight of “Lindesfarne II” is the power of the songs one line: “Beacon Don’t Fly Too High. The second you hear it you know exactly what it means. You understand why he repeats it constantly for three minutes straight. Doing the most with the minimal, that is James Blake’s gift.

4. We Bros by WU LYF

“It’s a sad song that makes a man put
money before life
a sad song that puts a man for sale.”

 

The most deceiving title of the year. In the year 2011, a song called We Bros should be this raucous anthem towards the lavish excesses life has to offer. It should be a song on Watch the Throne. It’s not. It’s a raucous anthem, yes, but not towards the ostentatious side of Society’s Excesses, the exact opposite in fact. We Bros, much like the rest of WU LYF’s style, is about breaking free from the trappings of society. The money grabbing, the stereotypes of beauty, the 9-5 dead end jobs, all of it. When people first find out that WU LYF stands for World Unite: Lucifer Youth Foundation, they immediately rush to Satanism. But this isn’t Tyler and Company trying to scare you into thinking they’re deeper than they are. This is a group of guys using Lucifer as a stand in for all the things we as a society define as evil that are merely things misunderstood. We Bros is an anthem for everyone whose ever been sick of the way society works. The greatness of the song isn’t in the music—though not without trying because that chorus is bigger than anything on Watch the Throne—its in the songs ability to pull such a massive topic into 6 minutes of dudes singing We Bros. Somehow, We Bros is no longer an anthem for the over-privileged but for the under-heard. We’re Bros in our ability to see the world for what it is and break away if we so choose to.

3. Wicked Games by the Weeknd

You bring your love, baby I can bring my shame. You bring the drugs and I can bring my pain”

“Get me off of this, I need confidence in myself”

“I left my girl at home, I don’t love her no more”. And with that, the best song from the best album(mixtape) of the year begins. Because, and let’s be honest here, who can’t relate to such things. Wicked Games describes in gut-wrenchingly honest detail the path of a man just trying to feel something, anything. The girl he’s with he doesn’t love and he just needs someone to get him out of his spiral of drugs and alcohol. But here lies the irony of it all: the liqoured up, drugged down women are the ones he’s drawn to the most. For all of the fame earned from the “Progressive R&B” tag, the brilliance of the Weeknd comes from being able to shine a light on the dark situations of modern society with the utmost bluntness.

 

2.Holocene by Bon Iver

“I realized I wasn’t magnificent”

The best Bon Iver song and it isn’t close. That pulsating, chord churning guitar that carries the song like the Piano Loop carries “All My Friends”. The way the drums slowly build on top. The way EVERYTHING slows builds on top of it attempting to bury the guitar under a mountain of angst, anxiety, and atmospheric panic. The way it refuses to cower. The falsetto that muddles an already vague song. The way it doesn’t matter. This song is fucking flawless.

 

And yet…

 

1. Yonkers by Tyler the Creator

 

You weren’t beating Yonkers this year. Sorry.