Welcome to the third, and penultimate, installment of the Music Dispatch Year in Review! Today we take a look at singles. Tomorrow, for the final, we take a look at my favorite albums!
At home, in high school, and with friends, I have a reputation of listening to a lot of music. Especially in real life, I’m known for always having my headphones on. This has not changed the past two years. It’s the album listening habits that are new, really — in the past, I would have my selection of songs that I’d obsess over, overplay, and intimately associate with a slice of my life. Nowadays I listen to discographies, but really my heart will always be with a good pop single — or one that should’ve been (hence why I did the b-sides list yesterday). When it comes to listing those songs, though, let alone ranking them, my mind seems to split into two: the one who “objectively” acknowledges things like production quality, vocals, narrative within the song and its wider impact on pop music; and then the person that listens to a song once and thinks it’s the best made song of all time. This list below is far, far from being complete, and I had to cull a lot of songs in the process, but ultimately I feel happy about the selection I have as they show off what a varied, fun year it was for music overall.
With this in mind, I present to you: these are my singles of the year. Don’t mind the #21 we’re starting off with, we’ve actually got 25 songs here. Any song that was used to promote an album, be that before or after release, counts here.
The way this will work here is: from #21 to #11 it’s shorter blocks, and from #10 on it’s longer essays, all the way until #1, which is its own essay.
#21 Leave The Door Open - Silk Sonic
It’s been three years since Bruno Mars has last released 24k Magic, but this single makes it feel like no time passed at all; coupled with Anderson .Paak’s smooth vocals complimenting this retro pastiche of Bruno Mars perfectly.
#20 Scratchcard Larnyard - Dry Cleaning
Post-punk had a serious revival this year, the most impressive song of which was the single of Dry Cleaning’s debut album, with vocalist Florence Shaw’s dry delivery making all the lyrics stand out that much more in its absurd humor.
#19 Sister Ray
and Sky Love - Foxes
Foxes is three on three with her singles to upcoming album The Kick, but Sister Ray and Sky Love practically beg for the dancefloor to be opened, wonderfully catchy songs with high produced songs with Foxes’ vocals gliding over the song beautifully.
#18 Savage - aespa
PC Music for the K-Pop stan, the glitchy, minimalist and abrasive Savage has a lot to love, be it the ridiculous Yoo Youngjin-esque breakdown or the anti-chorus or simply Winter’s Oh my god, don’t you know I’m a... savage?
#17 Acik Bir Yara - Jakuzi
In one of the most difficult years for Turkey economically and socially, Jakuzi’s dark, foreboding music is not a balm so much as a grim acknowledgement of what is happening. It helps that it is a banger as well.
#15 Thot Shit - Megan Thee Stallion
The chorus may be made for TikTok, but does that matter when it’s Hands on my knees, shaking ass, on my thot shit? Absolutely not. Still, it’s the cold, vicious delivery of the verses that make you want to replay this song again and again.
#14 t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l - Willow
Quite a few people were attempting a revival of the 00s pop punk, but I found nobody as successful at it as Willow. It’s her weary, hurt-beyond-her-years vocals that sell so much of the song and rise it to even greater heights.
#13 Ugly Dance - ONF
Beautiful Beautiful will land on a lot of year-end lists for being bouyant and bright, but it’s a little too loud for me. Ugly Dance, though, is a bona-fide hip hop-fused pop banger, with an anthemic chorus that really makes the song so fun.
#12 Good Ones - Charli XCX
Hyperpop is dead, long live over-the-top pop. Charli gets to stretch her vocal performance here, her inimitable charisma treading the usual waters of self-sabotage and missed love. The only crime of this song is that it’s two minutes long.
#11 ARE YOU WITH THAT? - Vince Staples
Pre-single LAW OF AVERAGES sounded murky and didn’t really catch my attention, but ARE YOU WITH THAT is wistful and melancholy both, Staples’ usual topic of crime and poverty now in stark relief to a beat that won’t mask it anymore.
#10 INDUSTRY BABY (feat. Jack Harlow) - Lil Nas X
It wasn’t always clear if Lil Nas X was here to stay or not, not even when Panini dropped and it was his second top 10 hit. I wonder what it really was — perhaps it was him coming out, perhaps it was his savvy social media presence, perhaps it was the long rollout and tease of Call Me By Your Name and album MONTERO, or perhaps it was his persistence to stick through. But in either case, all these factors are what ultimately makes INDUSTRY BABY his first real victory lap: the horns, the satsifying trap beats, but most of all Lil Nas X’s sneer: Funny how you said it was the end / And I went and did it again. 2021 was a year where a number of artists carved their name to the mainstream conversation despite the pandemic; Lil Nas X was one of them. INDUSTRY BABY sounds like victory in mp3 format, and it is: a long, hard-won one. This one is really for the champions.
#9 Smile - Wolf Alice
The bass runs viciously through this song, vocalist Ellie Roswell calm and assured as she sings: I am what I am and I’m good at it, before the chorus appears halfway through the song, a release to all the tension that has built up. The chorus itself reminds me of dream pop and arena rock both, the acoustic guitar giving a moment of gentleness only for us to go back to the bass and electric guitar, everything building up to a tense, head-banging instrumental bridge. Even in the context of Blue Weekend the song is an oddity; you have your two-minute tour de force Play The Greatest Hits, sure, but the other songs are more melancholy and thoughtful. Smile is a welcome burst of empowerment, a moment of the narrator to let people pass her by and move on despite everything that happens to her.
#8 I Can See The Future and Bouncin - Tinashe
I Can See The Future opens with New level unlocked, and then **the titular 333, an angel number meaning that the “universe urges you to keep going”. It’s hard not to see why Tinashe would name her second record as an independent musician after this number, and that same sense of karmic insistence and purpose seems to guide all her songs on the record, especially so on both Bouncin and I Can See The Future. In the latter, Tinashe asserts how amazing she is — and unafraid to get what she really wants, which is the lover in question whose mind she can’t read, but whose future she can see. The sleek beat compliments her nimble vocals perfectly.
On the other hand, Bouncin is less concerned with the future and more in the present here and now — or so you’d think, but the beat seems to fold into itself again and again, like the percussion is made of a as of yet undiscovered metal. Once again, Tinashe is at home here, delivering a dance hit for isolated times as she sings about uploading her dirty pictures in hopes they make it to the cloud and having a good time. Her vocals soar to a beautiful falsetto throughout the first verse and are joined by vocals in the second, and it’s that combination that makes Bouncin so much fun and engaging throughout.
#7 Unlock It (feat. Playboi Carti) - ABRA
This year, Charli XCX blew up on TikTok with Lock It, a hypnotic catchy song off her 2019 mixtape Pop 2; in response, she renamed the track to Lock It (Unlock It) on Spotify for easier algorithms. Meanwhile, a different artists with a much similar song title blew up on my charts. In a different world, ABRA’s newest track would most likely be the soundtrack to a club scene; the satisfying thump of the bass and the clear percussion combined with an interesting dial tone throughout and the slurred, reverb-heavy vocals of ABRA floating over it all, barely enunciating in the chorus. Unlock it, she intones over and over for the chorus, unlock it for me. On top of it all, mumble rapper and rockstar Playboi Carti’s feature on this is one of his most spirited and energetic; it’s wonderful to hear him as something other than a background instrument for a while. The two-and-a-half minute runtime ensures that this stayed on my rotation again and again, unlocking it.
#6 Sticker - NCT 127
SM’s musical output this year divides pretty neatly to two categories: the adult contemporary bores, and the abrasive songs guaranteed to split your timeline to two. Of the latter, DemJointz was responsible for the attitude-heavy Don’t Call Me by SHINee (which was quickly panned by longtime fans as “SHINee doing 4th gen kpop”), and Yoo Youngjin had a hand at aespa’s Savage and Next Level both. But the two joined forces on NCT 127’s first comeback in a year and a half, the utterly odd, minimalist Sticker. This is the one I didn’t get the first time, as you’ll recall, but the weird Naruto flute, the random piano chords in the pre-chorus and chorus, with percussions that go nowhere on top of the members singing a melody you don’t seem to hear at the back, they actually do make sense together — and that is what makes Sticker so compelling and fresh. There is simply nothing like it in K-Pop ever, and of course it makes sense that SM’s weirdest boygroup unit gets it.
#5 TRUST! - JPEGMAFIA
Though you would never know from fan favorites and overall presentation, JPEGMAFIA is actually amazing at making pretty songs: after all, this is the guy that covered Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Baby before. He has a knack for choosing clear, twinkling beats and is equally good at rapping and giving a gentle vocal performance on top of it (juxtaposed by its content, of course). 1539 N. Calvert was an exercise in anger, but it’s the calm, confident vocal delivery of TRUST! that puts it as the clearest, prettiest JPEGMAFIA song yet. On the two-minute song, a glittery beat skids over a skittish beat and JPEGMAFIA raps over how good he feels. I won't even fib, I'm feeling nice, he says, and it’s hard not to believe him there. JPEGMAFIA’s discography is often about people (and labels) that have scorned him, the government that fails not only us but everyone else, and gentleness is an often surprising element in songs. Here, for the first time, it is front and center, and it’s beautiful.
#4 Drink It and Kingdom Come - The Boyz
Imagine it’s 2021, and everything’s the same but one thing. Drink It by The Boyz is the comeback song of this year: not Thrill Ride and certainly not Maverick. As it stands, this song over here was a Universe exclusive, the full music video locked behind a paywalled app. For shame, though, because this song released in June is the kind of second generation Kpop revival that people want and The Boyz excel at: entirely serious, vaguely theatrical (vampires!!!), and extremely competent. The production here is simply excellent, the vocal performances high quality. The highlight of it all? that bridge, whipping out an electric guitar that straight up throws things into AM-era Arctic Monkeys. When was the last time you could say that about any K-Pop track? It’s one of the most interesting entries of The Boyz’s discography so far, as well as one of their strongest.
Kingdom Come, on the other hand, was the original track for second season of Mnet slog Kingdom. This time around, Albi Albertsson — who has produced my favorite The Boyz title track, Right Here — helms the track, and we are thrown even deeper into second generation revival: the dramatic strings, the theatre ramped up, a chorus that soars high. The vocal performances are great, the raps don’t distract, and the high note by Sangyeon at the climax tops things off beautifully. It’s a well-fit finale for a show that took two years off this group, every bit as intense and tense as the show’s trajectory has been. But all that aside, it’s just a perfect K-Pop boygroup track, period, and yet another track that I personally wish had been promoted so more people got to hear it. As it stands, all three of The Boyz’s best tracks this year are somewhat hidden from non-fans; for shame, because it’s songs like these that really cement The Boyz as the top boygroup of their generation.
#3 LUMBERJACK and JUGGERNAUT (feat. Pharrell & Lil Uzi Vert) - Tyler, the Creator
You know how people talk about their 2021 bingos? I don’t think “Tyler the Creator releases a record that not only rivals but may even overtake IGOR” was on mine, or on anyone’s, really. Even more shocking — which is funny to say for an artist whose entire M.O is and has been shocking people and doing the wildest left turns — is that it had Tyler rap again, and commit very seriously to hip hop. LUMBERJACK, yet another track that only clocks in at 2:18 minutes, is an addictive song by an artist at the top of his game, utterly confident with not a single breath wasted between beats. Really, the only break you get is at the start, initiated by DJ Drama. The guitar loop, a sample of Gravediggaz’s 2 Cups Of Blood, gives the song an intimidating aura throughout as Tyler discusses his current status in the game, his wealth, his haters, the men he loves. The little vocal snippets by DJ Drama throughout work both to add the hype and add a welcome dimension to a very busy melody.
JUGGERNAUT, only six seconds longer, starts off innocuous enough — Hey Miss Parker... wait, wait, wait! DJ Drama calls, and Tyler rapping a little, only for things to immediately switch up to a heavy bass underscoring Tyler’s verse, then a vicious percussion and insane dial tone loop for Lil Uzi Vert’s verse and a similar, yet slightly different one for Pharrell Williams’s. All three discuss wealth and their superior status compared to the other artists, all three of them at their absolute best, the beat always accomodating to the rapping at hand. It’s this immaculate combination of everybody present that makes this track so perfect for looping. It’s been years and years since Tyler has flaunted like this that wasn’t exactly one-off POTATO SALAD, and while both Flower Boy and IGOR had that type of song, this still stands head and shoulder above the two.
#2 Need to Know - Doja Cat
After a successful 2020, it feels as though 2021 was always Doja’s to lose, so sure was her ascension to superstardom. The second single to her Planet Her album was “just something before the next big thing,” or so Doja has tweeted, but of course that “just something” is the understatement of the year. It’s Doja we’re talking about. Need to Know has a spacey beat coupled with a simple thumping percussion that really just serve as a canvas for Doja’s vocals and raps, so endlessly flexible they might as well be rubber, and almost always unpredictable. The song’s about sex and Doja being horny — nothing new, but it’s the delivery (deliveries, perhaps, is the better song; there’s just so much she does with her voice!) throughout that still manages to make things utterly unpredictable. The second verse alone has one of her best rap verses, and even that switches things up three times at least! And that’s nothing to say of the background vocals. Need To Know is inventive, fun, and utterly riveting — in other words, it is simply the best chart-topping song of the year.
#1 Just for me - pinkpantheress
We love looking back. Or, you’re like me, hate looking back, and still tear up at anything that suddenly brings you back to the past. Nostalgia is powerful! Artists and audiences — not to forget companies — love things that recall simpler times, tunes they grew up with, everything that captures the spirit of brown-tinged nostalgia goggles. When Fight Club’s narrator says that everything is a copy of a copy of a copy, and he’s not exactly wrong. We want something that sounds like the thing, but can’t sound too original, or else it’s no longer for us, the people that grew up with songs — likely copies of something else to begin with!
It’s a little cynical what the narrator says, though. Revivals can be good, or put another way, the original sometimes really isn’t as good as you remember it to be. For every godtier 80s song you know, there’s 5 that don’t sound good; for every revival song that you roll your eyes over, there’s a likely chance that the modern production actually brings something new and interesting to the table. For instance, the synth-dripping 80s revival that was en vogue for a while last year gave us a song with retro pastiche so immaculate it creates a fake reality of an era that never was (Blinding Lights). This year, in the indie sphere, artists turned their heads to the 00s, whether that was alternative rock, t.a.t.u covers or 2-step garage. pinkpantheress, herself barely 20, tapped into the latter this year, and it was what kickstarted her career from singing on loops and samples on TikTok, no song going over two minutes. Just for me is produced by Mura Masa, and the acoustic guitar coupled with the 2step beat on top — coupled with Pinkpantheress’s timid vocals it does something utterly magical. Suddenly, it’s not just the past and nostalgia driving this song, not just evoking a memory that has never been. It’s also, thanks to the skittering beat, something futuristic, something that could happen to you, an alternative future where the hottest phone is the Motorola Razr and you can watch 240p videos on it at best. It recalls a slice of time that has never existed and never really will, a time that is informed by, but is untethered the here and now: a daydream. A slice of escapism.
2021 is a year where ????? happened, a weird and incomprehensible year just like the last, and if I had to describe it all in one song, it would be this 1:55 minute track about an obsessive love with a music video that has a potato quality that invites you to simply stop, and take in all that was, all that might have been, and all that might be.