Songs, 2021

20. Tems/Brent Faiyaz “Found”
19. Wet “Blades of Grass”
Bowled over by a gentle breeze

18. Juan Wauters/Homeshake “Monsoon”
If Jonathan Richman and Paul Westerberg are the Cain and Abel of indie rock, and Elliott Smith is Zachariah, Doug Martsch is Methuselah, and, of course, Mac DeMarco is the wise prophet Ezekiel, then what does that make Juan Wauters?

17. Caroline Polachek “Bunny is a Rider”
Too much sauce

16. Ancient Cat Society “Out of My Mind”
2021 “Thirteen”

15. H.E.R. “Damage”
Out: H.E.R. is a plant
In: H.E.R. is good

14. Alex G “End Song”
Existential diarist for American outsiders

13. Peyton “It’s Been So Long”
“It’s been so long/since I seen ya”

12. Doss “Strawberry”
Elite vibes

11. DaBoii “Too Hard 4 the Radio”
I done seen enough

10. Trippie Redd/Lil Uzi Vert “Holy Smokes”
9. Playboi Carti “JumpOutTheHouse”
> “Miss the Rage”

8. Cookiee Kawaii “Relax Your Mind”
Jersey club meets Tekken Tag Tournament

7. Zsela “Earlier Days (Sunship Remix)”
The garage/two-step revival loomed large but this is the song I couldn’t stop playing

6. Jayda G “All I Need”
Elite vibes

5. RXKNephew “American tterroristt”
Top ten bars:
10. Let’s get back to Jehovah’s Witnesses
9. Every landlord I know a crackhead
8. That’s why I don’t eat bitches’ food now
7. I never liked Simon off American Idol/I ain’t really like how he talked to Black people
6. The first religion worshiped the sun/they made some bullshit story about that
5. Why the fuck Benjamin Franklin stood his ass up on the roof?
4. N***** move like VladTV/look like VladTV/get indicted on VladTV
3. They asked my mama’s maiden name/I don’t know we don’t know each other
2. I’m reading the Bible like “what is this?”
1. They talkin’ about pray before you eat/bitch you eatin’ a dead animal

4. Coi Leray “No More Parties”
Every year there has to be one radio rap song that makes me want to lose my mind

3. Beabadoobee “Last Day on Earth”
The turn of the century was complicated: in fewer than two years I went from listening to nothing but the radio to accidentally reading music magazines and changing my entire taste to become more opinionated than any pre-teen should be. The “Incubus is my favorite band” to “the Strokes are my favorite band” to “Pavement is my favorite band” timeline occurred within 12 months. I knew that nu-metal and glossy soft-rock weren't good for me so I had to find something else and in 2001 the way to find it was Spin and Rolling Stone.

Even as an adult, I don't think nu-metal and pop-punk are cool, I don’t think they're underrated, I don’t think critics were wrong and they're due for a reevaluation. It’s the wallpaper sound of radio as relentlessly angsty and petulant that reminds me of feeling but not understanding complicated emotions as a child that short-circuited my tenuous and evolving grip on them. The drop-D nu-metal tuning and nasal pop-punk whine take me back to a lonely child surrounded by so much bullshit; first pre-y2k doom and gloom, then post-2000, pre-9/11 empty calorie ephemera. Putting on the stereo because I had no one to talk to, or watching tv until way late for the same reason. The anticipation of the millennium was over, the boom of the ‘90s gave way to the party still raging but having warped into something dreary and soulless. Read any “best of” list of music or movies or TV from 2000. The culture was in a bad place. It didn’t have an aim. Every piece of new technology was gray. I do not miss this time, it was vapid and ugly and I think even at an age where I lacked the vocabulary, experience, and maturity to understand what I was feeling I knew I wanted to opt out.

For every day I spent alone (because my siblings are much older than me) in my room reading quietly (the tv was always on) was also a day I spent paying for one movie with my sister and seeing two. My oldest brother would drop by long enough with an arm of CDs I could play on the family desktop with headphones in because when he left they would leave with him and that was the only time with interesting music I had. Even if I knew I didn't like nu-metal, memory fills in the blanks with wistfulness. When we went to the movies or rode in a car Nine Days was holy. We are in communion with each other through this music. I learned about the electoral college in social studies and was like “this is so complicated and stupid good thing it literally never matters” in the fall of 2000.

There is genuine sweetness in songs like “She’s So High” or “Teenage Dirtbag” that resonates. The songs haven’t broken through the threshold to critically approved guilty pleasures or secret additions to the great American songbook, but I’d put them and “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” in there. There’s aching and yearning amidst the slick production that reflects the Teflon feeling of the year 2000.

“Last Day on Earth” takes the best parts of all that. It sounds like all those lonely afternoons but with the right elements in place. It helps the song is called what it’s called because intentional or not it does call back to the era of waiting for apocalypse, whether it was y2k panic or the grotesque aftermath of 9/11. With the lag between then and now, we can see how far we’ve come, and now is the time to look back. This is why pop-punk is back. But that music makes me feel lonely in the same way I felt lonely as a child. “Last Day on Earth” makes me wistful and nostalgic in the best way, revisionist history that extracts the good parts of circa 2000 idealism, a vision of perfect youthful exuberance

2. Isaiah Rashad “RIP Young”
The House is Burning was an essential late-summer album and passes the car test, but I don't think Rashad pushed himself enough in the booth. “RIP Young” validates the existence of the record. This is my favorite song on the album and sure it’s about any number of things: trunk-rattling bass, Project Pat, cool cat/top dog nomenclature. It's also about the essence of doing very little, and capturing a moment of peace unbothered by the goal of getting anywhere

1. Tirzah “Sink In”
The best songs obliterate context. Colourgrade disappointed me not because I’m unwilling to go where Tirzah’s muse takes her, but because from the choppy rhythms in her early work to the minimal masterpiece Devotion, the space between the sounds and her voice exuded so much warmth and intimacy you could nestle inside them. Colourgrade was frayed to the point of intangibility.

How does art compete with nature? It feels like something that’s always been extant, wholly of this world, lightly touched by transcendence. “Sink In” expands beautifully on the desolate landscape of Devotion, metamorphized into a breathing monolith of sound, a pulsing beat that plows through one’s chest like the heartbeat of God. The song is all rhythm, with a snaking organ melody that subverts its basic structure. It’s song as experience, as physical sensation, as devotional hymn.

I visited New York City recently and it always sounded like a lie when I said I loved it. I don’t have a lot to say when I truly love something. I can talk myself in circles about why I love something but the act of expressing something as simple as, “I love this,” I don’t have more to add. My friend said: “You let it speak for itself.” What was so arresting about “Sink In” is you could play it over and over and over and it’d never completely show itself. It speaks for itself. You never reach the bottom of it. The capacity to love is endless. I love that.