The Best Songs Of 2021, According To Everyone
It's December, which means Best of 2021 lists are here. With so many lists out there, who has time to read all of them?
Turns out: We do. But because you probably don't, we rounded up all the Top 10 lists we could find, smashed 'em together in a big spreadsheet, and spit out overall Top 10 lists for the year's best songs, albums, books, TV shows and movies. You're welcome.
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The Best Songs Of 2021
10. 'Drivers License' — Olivia Rodrigo
Anyone who's ever had their heart broken will feel how 18-year-old Olivia Rodrigo feels on this aching Grammy-nominated hit: "You said forever, now I drive alone past your street." The power ballad broke the Spotify record for most one-day streams for a non-holiday song and spent eight consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also won Apple Music and MTV Video Music awards for song of the year. It reached No. 1 around the world, from Australia and Denmark to Indonesia and South Africa because it is angry, hurt, frustrated, loving, tearful perfection, complete with car chime.
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9. 'Leave The Door Open' — Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, Silk Sonic
Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak join forces for a damn-near-perfect stroll into vintage Seventies Soul Train R&B. "Leave the Door Open" didn't sound retro because it felt so gloriously right for 2021, a bell-bottom seduction ballad for the post-pandemic summer we didn't quite get. These two studio obsessives get every technical detail right. But Mars and .Paak work even harder to get the mood right, so "Leave the Door Open" is pure romance, with every drum hook a pheromone rush. You can practically see the Harvey's Bristol Cream on the nightstand, right under the velvet paintings and strobe light.
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8. 'Happier Than Ever' — Billie Eilish
The lyrical and structural brilliance of "Happier Than Ever" is self-evident. Its pop-rock bait and switch gave me the most intense dopamine rush in my career as a music critic, and I certainly wasn't alone. A compilation video of "people being shook" by the mid-song transition has racked up more than 1 million views on YouTube.
[Insider]
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7. 'Bunny Is a Rider' — Caroline Polachek
Aloofness, as a sub-component of "charm," is an ancient, semi-teachable skill that, when used correctly, can be a remarkably life-changing tool. Caroline Polachek cares to illustrate: In the immaculate video for "Bunny is a Rider," a bleepy, bumpy little ode to the pleasures of using choice acts of escape as part of a self-preservational, anti-FOMO mindset, she roams around a stockroom while dodging a Minotaur. The monster's supposed to represent the pains of unnecessary obligation; the storage units, a life scrupulously compartmentalized. It's like if an Aesop fable met self-help in a pop song. Not since Kate Bush have we had such a funny modern fabulist.
[NPR]
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6. 'I Do This All The Time' — Self Esteem
There has been no shortage of bands talking at us this year; the beauty of "I Do This All the Time" is how Rebecca Taylor embodies that nagging internal voice, the ever-present bully who is there to remind you of every embarrassing moment and cruel word aimed in your direction. Narrated in a rueful mutter over a backdrop of drizzle and a downcast beat, her moments of self-sabotage, as it turns out, aren't that big a deal - sending overlong texts, forgetting an ex's birthday - but it's her ear for those small, grubby humiliations, the kind that spread like mould, that captures how it feels to be trapped by an inescapable sense of yourself. As Taylor touches on the cold exes and smug married mates and demeaning comments that have made her feel unworthy, she subtly outlines the pervasive expectations that have made her so fretful and prone to second-guessing, and I Do This All The Time becomes as much a reference to bad habits as to that relentless conditioning. And so she earns her massive, Lisa Stansfield-worthy chorus of women encouraging her to stand tall and hold steady, the crowning moment of this strange, wonderful, deeply moving song that alerted a nation to Taylor's actually very considerable virtues.
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5. 'Be Sweet' — Japanese Breakfast
Michelle Zauner began the solo project Japanese Breakfast as an outlet for grief after her mother's death. But with her third album, Jubilee, she decided it was time to make room for joy — and lead single "Be Sweet" was the perfect way to usher that in. It's an indie-rock-goes-pop fantasia, influenced by Whitney Houston and Madonna, with a bassline as danceable as the chorus is hooky. The narrator sings to a failing lover, urging them to give it another try, although the chorus doubles as a crush anthem: "Be sweet to me, baby / I wanna believe in you; I wanna believe in something
[Spin]
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4. 'All Too Well' — Taylor Swift
When Taylor Swift announced she was re-recording her 2012 album, Red, "All Too Well" was a hotly anticipated track. The song, an achingly beautiful breakup ballad that has received cult classic status thanks to fan speculation that it's about Swift's split with Jake Gyllenhaal, has, in 2021, matured and grown into a 10-minute epic with new, keenly recognized lyrics that not only explores first love, but questions the imbalanced power dynamics of the relationship. The extended version is an improvement on a design that Swift has made her own over the course of her career—that is, ballads on the ins and outs of love—but with Taylor's version of "All Too Well," we bear witness to a woman who is reclaiming her narrative and taking up her time and space. It's a journey that's well worth 10 minutes.
[Time]
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3. 'Chaise Longue' — Wet Leg
Raise your hand if, this year, you haven't psyched yourself up for a gig, workout, or Big Night Out by listening to the thrillingly uncompromising 'Chaise Longue'? If this list simply reflected the number of punch-the-air moments a chorus produced, then this slick, rapid debut single would be a runaway Number One. Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers delivered this song with the confidence, muscle and hunger of indie stalwarts, crafting a heady blend of weighty bass and needling riffs so precise and addictive that it could ping pong around your head for days.
[NME]
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2. 'good 4 u' — Olivia Rodrigo
Isn't it a Paramore ripoff? Should anyone older than 30 responsibly enjoy it? Why is Courtney Love mad again? Kick up whatever dust you'd like around Olivia Rodrigo's infectious breakup anthem and the rest of us will keep pressing play on this three-minute slice of pop-punk heaven. Olivia Rodrigo stole 2021 from the Taylors, the Billies, the Lordes, and "good 4 u" shows why: This is a windows open, top speed, shout-along masterpiece about a boy who's moved on...and honestly who cares? "I guess that therapist I found you really helped." Damn.
[Vogue]
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1. 'MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)' — Lil Nas X
The way that Lil Nas and his entire team just absolutely GET the music industry is unparalleled by any of his peers or by any of the greats. Everyone working on his releases knows what they need to do in 2021 to get the world enthralled. Montero is a track that everyone was hungry for thanks to its teasing debut in a Super Bowl advert and viral TikTok success, and by the time it finally dropped, it was a worldwide smash. And honestly? There's nobody more deserving. What Lil Nas X is doing for young queer kids, young black gays who never see anyone like them in rap, is unprecedented. Montero was a force to be reckoned with and still has me grinning when it blasts its way on to my playlist all these months later. The best song of 2021, and a song that laughed any one hit wonder detractors right out of the door.
[The Tab]
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Listen to all the songs on Amazon Music.
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A Note On Methodology
We wish we could say there was a super fancy algorithm that combed the internet and did this for us. But the truth is that the entity doing the internet combing was a human Digg Editor, and calculations were performed by an Excel sheet that ingested and re-ranked all the lists we fed into it (briefly: #1 ranked items received 10 points, #2 ranked items got 9 points... down through #10 ranked items, which got 1 point; items on unranked lists all got 5.5 points).