The Top 100 Tracks of 2010

Our run-down of the year in music continues this week and through the rest of the year. For a look at what we've run so far, check out links to our top music videos, the year in photos, our favorite Pitchfork.tv features, the best of Pitchfork news, and the Worst Album Covers in 2010. Here's what we have coming up this week:

Monday: Top 100 tracks, #100-51
Tuesday: Top 100 tracks, #50-1
Wednesday: Albums, Honorable Mention: 20 great records that didn't make our Top 50
Thursday: Top 50 Albums of 2010, #50-21
Friday: Top 50 Albums of 2010, #20-1

And then:

December 20: Guest List: Best of 2010__
December 27__: The Year in News
January 3: Regular coverage resumes.

To hear the tracks, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist.

Thanks for reading and have a great holiday!

100. These New Puritans

"We Want War"

[Domino]

Few recent British rock bands seem to have much grasp of the islands'musical history prior to the 1960s, so These New Puritans' fascination with 17th century choral music would be refreshing even if it didn't pay off artistically. But it does, and while the music may owe a structural debt to classical forms, the results could hardly sound more futuristic.

Over seven and a half minutes, "We Want War" experiences countless mood swings, with swells of chopped-up, haunted voices playing perfectly against martial drumming, darkly arranged orchestration, and Jack Barnett's signature mumble. Here, These New Puritans distinguish themselves among the most restless UK indie acts, proving they have the vision and talent to make their most ambitious ideas connect at a gut level. --Tom Ewing

99. Gayngs

"The Gaudy Side of Town"

[Jagjaguwar]

Gayngs already do a song called "The Last Prom on Earth", so the gaudiness here probably refers to something other than salmon tuxes and pink corsages. This is after-prom music, anyway, with Gayngs frontman Ryan Olson mixing ambrosial crooning and tony sax to create a palpable Barry White vibe, with just a hint of danger. Bon Iver's Justin Vernon stamps his approval by offering some surprisingly sultry backing vocals. And what should be a sleazy key party blossoms into something slinky and breathlessly affectionate. --Zach Kelly

98. Male Bonding

"Year's Not Long"

[Sub Pop]

"Year's Not Long" is about as close to a mission statement as Male Bonding can get. It first appeared as the grungier half of a split 7" with Eat Skull last year, but found new life in 2010 as the opening swing from the London trio's Sub Pop debut, Nothing Hurts. Though they gave the song's sonics a shower and shave, its bleeding, blistering pace commanded attention. The trio absolutely bullrides its way through this thing, like it's the only song they can (or care to) play. When frontman John Arthur Webb stops strangling his guitar three quarters of the way through, it's not to catch his breath. Instead, he wails the song's title over a high-rise crescendo that, when it finally breaks, sends the whole thing out with one, last, fuzzy crash. In eight seconds. --David Bevan

97. Ramadanman

"Don't Change for Me"

[Hessle]

The trend in UK bass music last year was the razor-sharp, juttingly melodic 'purple' craze spearheaded by artists like Joker, Guido, and Gemmy. This year, many producers took the opposite tack, embracing cold, metallic textures, IDM-indebted rhythmic structures, and negative space that at times felt almost antagonistic. The arrhythmic splatter of juke music was deployed on singles from Addison Groove and the Night Slugs camp, while techno-leaning producer Untold's "Fly Girls" brought dry, whip-cracked beats to the club floor. But it was David Kennedy, co-founder of UK label Hessle Audio, who pushed the sound to an extreme with this gorgeous closing track to the self-titled EP he released under his Ramadanman guise. What starts with tense cymbal hits patiently unfurls into something more silvery, with patches of skittering 'ardcore-indebted rhythms and spectral vocal samples. --Larry Fitzmaurice

96. Diplomats

"Salute"

[self-released]

The reunited Dipset crew hasn't changed much, so you already know what to expect; while Cam'ron manages a quick double-time flow to draw attention briefly to his rapping, this track's verses don't break a lot of stylistic ground. The track is exceptional, though, for its anthemic production, which announces the triumphant return of New York's own brand of eccentric regional rap. MPC wizard Araabmuzik's screaming, twisted spinwheel beat is the sound of holes being torn in the stratosphere, fueling a comeback that both sustains the reunited crew's buzz while testifying to their continued relevance. --David Drake

95. Ty Segall

"Girlfriend"

[Goner]

The purest strains of rock'n'roll have always seemed to stem from what neurobiologists often refer to as "the lizard brain," the primitive parts of the mind that control basic functions such as breathing, eating, and reproducing. "Girlfriend", by SF garage-rocker Ty Segall, is a perfect model, eschewing higher-order function and complex cognition in favor of focused primal urge. The song's mixture of power chords, bam-thwack drums, and lyrics about a girl is so time-honored it's eligible for Social Security, but when it's done well, it still gets the heart racing. And usually, doing it well means sticking to the basics, a rule Segall closely follows; the only decoration is a thrilling one-finger, one-note piano solo, bringing a noisy clatter to a fight-or-flight crescendo. --Rob Mitchum

94. Kelis

"Acapella"

[Interscope]

Kelis' makeover from skewed R&B starlet to Fembot Fatale wasn't tough to predict. If you heard her guest spot on last year's Basement Jaxx opener "Scars", you got a taste of the robot princess that would emerge from the darkness of a year spent divorcing her husband, Nas, while pregnant with the couple's child, Knight. The David Guetta-helmed "Acapella" is explicitly about her newborn son, before whom her "whole life was a cappella." Kelis expresses this sentiment with almost operatic vigor, and her heartbreaking candor breathes life into the cyborg character she's adopted for her latest album, Flesh Tone. And while Lady Gaga's dancefloor-aimed influence is clear, the way Kelis blends human warmth with the icy chill of Guetta's electro-pulsing production places her closer to Robyn's end of the android-pop constellation. --Tyler Grisham

93. Freddie Gibbs

"National Anthem (Fuck the World)"

[Decon]

Anyone wading through the sea of mixtapes and leaked tracks by Freddie Gibbs in the past year or two can find the perfect summary of his career to date on "National Anthem (Fuck the World)". He recalls his drug-dealing past, his signing and departure from Interscope, and the return to his native Gary, Ind., all delivered in a cadence that can accelerate into a blizzard of words or slow down to a more measured take in the space of a couple bars. Credit is due to LA Riots' steely beat and string-laden samples, but it's Gibbs' burning desire to put his past behind him and seek atonement for his treatment at the hands of the major-label system that hits hardest. --Nick Neyland

92. Matthew Dear

"You Put a Smell on Me"

[Ghostly]

If you read something weird and leering into the title of "You Put a Smell on Me", you'd be absolutely correct. But on an album in which Matthew Dear found a new center between his work as a banging techno DJ/producer and a brooding pop songmaker, "You Put a Smell" was a sultry paean to lewdness and lust that seemed to come from a haunting, effectively inhuman, distance. Synthesizer arpeggios corkscrew out of it in a manner similar to Dear's beloved club guise Audion, but the drums lay back and slink-- all the better to make room for his low, louche voice as he tries to lure his target home. --Andy Battaglia

91. Liars

"Scarecrows on a Killer Slant"

[Mute]

Liars' Sisterworld was loudly touted as the trio's "L.A. album," but at its center was "Scarecrows on a Killer Slant", a track that feels like a redemptive half-step back to the witchy rural New Jersey setting of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned. The hollowed-out guitar grind and astringent drum march provide a raggedy schemata over which Angus Andrew spins almost every vocal trick he's ever tried, from chant-along screams to subtly twisted falsetto to sinister backing harmonies. This is Liars finding a suitably grubby meeting place for their conjoined fascinations with brash pop and strung-out noise, ultimately reaching that spot where they sound like they're sticking a knife in your back and smiling sweetly while they do it. --Nick Neyland

90. Abe Vigoda

"Crush"

[Bella Union / Post Present Medium]

"Crush" moves like an obsession driven forward by illogical desires. Michael Vidal's impassioned vocals are among the hookiest he's ever put to tape, but he also allows himself to be carried along by the sonic assault. The chorus delivers a teasingly brief endorphin rush, as Abe Vigoda make it unclear whether they're running from disaster or maniacally chasing after it, and the closing feedback evokes the smell of burnt rubber. It's also fitting that it shares a title with songs by Jimmy Eat World and Jennifer Paige; at the core of this confusion is something innocent-- a crush destined to go unrequited because nothing can match its intensity. --Ian Cohen

89. Usher [ft. Nicki Minaj]

"Lil Freak"

[LaFace / Jive]

Usher knows damn well that fans weren't crazy about the grown-ass, wifed-up character he presented on 2008's Here I Stand. People want sexy Usher, and that's exactly what he gave them with the enormous threesome ode "Lil Freak", with help from sparkplug rapper Nicki Minaj, who spits a highlight verse about recruiting a third for her and Usher's night in. Both shine, but it's producer Polow Da Don who steals the show, cutting up a hook from Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City" to create an epic backing track of deep, reverberant bass and orchestral sweep that just gets bigger and bigger as the song progresses. He knows it, too: Polow lets it go instrumental for a whole minute and a half at the end, and it stays thrilling up until the last second.  --Joe Colly

88. DOM

"Burn Bridges"

[Burning Mill]

In pop music, it's traditional to sing about the joy of new love, the sadness of passing love, the bitterness of lost love, and the acceptance of unrequited love. But the mix of cynicism and stoicism with which Worcester, Mass.-based trio Dom paint relationships on "Burn Bridges" is a rare beast. If you can make out the mumbled lyrics from under the cascading synths and fuzzy production, you'll hear the sound of a man rejecting closeness from friends and lovers alike, and offering advice on how others can similarly cloister themselves from the disappointment intimacy brings: "Make yourself an island." It'd be a heartbreaking sentiment if they didn't sound so damn happy about it. --Rebecca Raber

87. Perfume Genius

"Mr. Peterson"

[Transparent]

"Mr. Peterson" epitomizes the quiet depth that Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius displayed on his debut album, Learning. Its creaking pedals and thumping keys prime us for the physical intimacies to come. A teenaged narrator gets a romantic note and a Joy Division tape from a teacher, and he smokes weed in his truck. There's only the implication of sex, though clearly a line of authority has been breached. But it's to Hadreas' immense credit that "Mr. Peterson" isn't a didactic message-song. This happened, he says. Make of it what you will. The narrator's apparent indifference leaves us alone with our judgments of each plainspoken revelation. After the teacher's suicide, the masterfully ambiguous closing lines maroon us somewhere between sympathy for the devil and our own sense of moral justice, with a profound respect for Perfume Genius' acute understatement. --Brian Howe

86. Glasser

"Apply"

[True Panther]

Cameron Mesirow clearly had her ideas worked out long before she roped in Fever Ray co-producers Van Rivers and the Subliminal Kid for Ring, her debut album as Glasser. Compare the album version of "Apply" to the one she did a year before (on GarageBand), and it's hard not to think that the final mix is fuller, richer, "better," but also largely a question of nuance. Mesirow has said that her talents lie in arranging, a skill set you can certainly hear in her artfully layered sheets of percussion, synthesizer, and voice upon voice upon voice. (More than the frequently cited Kate Bush, Glasser often sounds like a punkier Juana Molina.) But in the deft shifts of key and intensity of "Apply", Glasser's facility with arrangements also translates into powerful songwriting, with the immediacy of what can only be called "heart" deftly reformatted for the tools at hand. --Philip Sherburne

85. Wavves

"Post Acid"

[Fat Possum / Green Label Sound]

"Post Acid" was the valiant return that few expected from Wavves' Nathan Williams after a run of bad decisions and fuck-ups. In this giddy fit of splashy pop-punk, Williams made clear that he's as snotty and brash as ever: "I'm just having fun with you," the gleefully parasitic chorus shouts, rightly suggesting that the world takes him a little too seriously. But Williams is definitely not fucking around here. "Post Acid" is tightly wound, trading in the gravely, lo-fi tumble of the old Wavves in favor of something clear and jagged. After spending much of King of the Beach ruminating on what an idiot he's been and the few qualms he has about continuing to be one, "Post Acid" is a moment of clarity: It's only rock'n'roll, you guys. From this guy, it's a perfect admonition. --Zach Kelly

84. Gil Scott-Heron

"New York Is Killing Me"

[XL]

Gil Scott-Heron doesn't have to tell you all the shit he's seen over the years. You hear it in his voice, which has grown coarse and deep with the years, its gravelly texture evoking an unending succession of bad days. "New York Is Killing Me" is urban blues refined and re-formed for the 21st century, drawing on his own life experiences-- his childhood with his grandmother, his early angry success, his stints in Rikers-- for maximum drama.

Richard Russell's production is eerie and otherworldly, building an unbearable tension out of snaps and handclaps, and interjecting ambient studio noise, crash cymbals, and a choir that rises out of nowhere. It's the sound of the city closing in on Scott-Heron, suffocating and strangling him, yet he remains stoic as he longs for the unlikely refuge of his hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. A bleak portrait of New York as a 70s slum rather than a post-Giuliani theme park, the song makes an odd but immensely affecting comeback that reminds you just how old he is and how long it's been since we've heard from him. --Stephen M. Deusner

83. Surfer Blood

"Floating Vibes"

[Kanine]

It starts with a big riff and a big beat and somehow finds its way to a sweet chamber-pop coda, and as such "Floating Vibes" might be the song that points as much to Surfer Blood's potential as it does to their current quality. There's no doubt they can handle a gigantic, fuzzed-out riff and some fine unison vocals, but it's also exciting to hear them so confidently working to build their sound out and survey some new ground. There's a coiled guitar lead waiting to spring at every turn, and every cosmic aside leads inexorably back to that heavy fuzz progression that keeps the song grounded. The lyrics echo the return in their assertion that whoever is leaving the narrator will be back again. What Surfer Blood winds up with is a pocket-size suite that doubles as a great indie rock song and a possible way forward. --Joe Tangari

82. Spoon

"Written in Reverse"

[Merge]

That poor piano. Spoon's Eric Harvey bides his time during the venomous Transference centerpiece and full-band temper tantrum "Written in Reverse" just bashing the hell out of a few very untickled-sounding ivories; by the time it's over, it sounds like the studio floor must be covered in splinters. While typically unflappable, Britt Daniel sounds positively unhinged here, snapping and snarling as he recounts a particularly nasty communication breakdown: "I wanna show you how I love you," he pleads, but frustration sets in; a light bulb has gone off, and it turns out "there's nothing there." In the midst of the uncharacteristically noncommittal Transference, the near-derangement in Daniel's vocal here feels gloriously feral and desperate. So much of Spoon's best work has felt like an elaborate subtraction problem, but in 2010, their strongest track just left it all out there. --Paul Thompson

81. Forest Swords

"Rattling Cage"

[No Pain in Pop]

"Rattling Cage", a post-whatever's-after-post-dubstep track filled with decontextualized samples and loops, and yawning with interpretive possibility, sounds like it's trying to make more than a musical point. Like Burial and his fellow dystopian discontents, Liverpool producer Matthew Barnes condemns Britain's urban spaces as prisons of poverty, violence, and despair-- exhibits A - Z in the case against modern capitalism. But Barnes doesn't say it in words, at least not English ones. A foul wind, a woman's wail, metallic clang, and a spectral organ articulate the stakes and solution. Or do they? The video makes a modest (or at least, less-violent) proposal: more inner-city music-education funding. As far as public policy goes, it's probably a little naïve. But damn, what an auspicious start. --Amy Granzin

80. The Radio Dept.

"Heaven's on Fire"

[Labrador]

Let's say you're one of your country's most underrated bands. Let's also say, hypothetically, you're a little irritated by that fact, but you're clever and talented enough to realize that nobody wants to hear a dreamy soft-rock band's sour grapes. For the Radio Dept., a long-running Swedish pop group that previously had their biggest international success with the Marie Antoinette soundtrack, "Heaven's on Fire" is a perfect solution. Originally titled "Spring Time", the song is as radiant as the season: all cheery keyboards, jazzy guitars, and muted reverb. But Thurston Moore's anti-capitalist opening rant-- omitted from a version I've heard over corporate airwaves-- isn't here just for kicks. "When I look at you, I reach for a piano wire," Johan Duncanson murmurs on the song's second verse. Later he worries that "everyone" seems to be siding with "charlatans." Hell is other people; this song is something else. Heavenly subversion. --Marc Hogan

79. Delorean

"Real Love"

[True Panther]

At first, the unnerving and violent video treatment ruined "Real Love" for me-- Delorean always came off like ambassadors to the kind of Mediterranean getaways and open-air raves where all sadness is banished, and I hadn't heard much this year that sounded more uplifting. But in retrospect, it took the shock value of the visual for me to realize why it's called "Real Love": the bloodthirsty dogs aren't killers, but creatures motivated by the same primal urges that drive our fantasies, and the economy of Ekhi Lopetegi's lyrics give the listener free range to reckon with its emotional complexity: while the piano vamps and Ibiza beats try to put a positive spin on things, the vocal sample embodies the resignation of asking, "Will we ever meet again?" and knowing the answer all too well. --Ian Cohen

78. Die Antwoord

"Enter the Ninja"

[Cherrytree / Interscope]

Whether you think these guys are South Africa's Yelawolf or just the zef Joaquin Phoenix, it's difficult to deny the instant, insistent appeal of Die Antwoord's de facto theme song and accompanying, overnight meme-making video. Both the song and the clip are pure cheese, but delivered with the utmost commitment. Main MC Ninja nimbly boasts about (duh, what else) his ninjitsu bona fides over a foundation of stereo-panned arpeggios, trance lead synths, and canned yet kinetic kicks, snares, and skittering hi-hats. Yo-Landi Vi$$er sings a supplicant, elfin-voiced chorus that rhymes "samurai" with "butterfly." The video is all ridiculous mean-mugging from Ninja and Comic-Con schoolgirl sexuality from Vi$$er. Plus: those haircuts! Those tattoos! The progeria! During the breakdown, Ninja goggles at just how awesome his own song is, and how he overcame all the doubters to get here: "Look at me now, all up in the Interweb!" So, yeah, it's a novelty, but a great one, and rarer than that: a gag that wills itself real. --Eric Grandy

77. Rihanna [ft. Drake]

"What's My Name?"

[Def Jam]

Following Rated R's demon-baring melodrama with a bona fide party record might be the savviest thing Rihanna's ever done. "What's My Name?" reminds us that Rihanna's always been an alpha-female, empowered and satisfied; girls have been demanding that their paramours speak their names for pop-eons, but Rihanna's request feels more like a threat than a request. Drake's guest-strutting here is endearingly corny (note to dudes: "The things that we could do in 20 minutes, girl," isn't, like, incentive), but it gives Rihanna the perfect platform to steam: She's interested, but mostly she wants to know what you can do for her. "Not everybody knows how to work my body, knows how to make me want it," she warns. Now, it's less about whether or not you remember her name, and more about whether or not you've got the balls to say it out loud. --Amanda Petrusich

76. Here We Go Magic

"Collector"

[Secretly Canadian]

Most guitar-based indie bands don't have anything new to say these days, just vaguely new ways to say them. Retro is a starting point we take for granted-- the challenge is making your rehash sophisticated and seamless. In a way, it's a moment in culture that makes minor standouts like "Collector"-- a song with zero surprises-- sound slightly surprising. It's not the first song to juxtapose a light, folksy touch with a rhythmic urgency, and it's not the first to play a staccato beat with a long, blurry synth line-- a hypothetical bibliography here would be pointless. But the songs that make "Collector" sound familiar don't make it sound irrelevant. There's a hurried, ramshackle quality that the Feelies wouldn't tolerate, and a scruffy edge Eno would tamp down. And I always get so lost in the pulse of the song that I forget the lyrics: "I've got a mild fascination… for the collectors," Luke Temple sings. Makes sense. --Mike Powell

75. Toro Y Moi

"Blessa"

[Carpark]

Chillwave engulfed indie pop this year, and though Toro Y Moi provided good vibes just like the rest of those post-grad loafers, Causers of This eschewed privileged ennui so it could soundtrack wizened acceptance. Most of Causers comfortably wrestles with a soul-crippling break-up, but the intro track "Blessa" tackles the peculiar, mid-recession feelings of working a job that's just totally whatever: "I found a job/ I do it fine/ Not what I want/ But still I try." From those possibly generation-defining lines, to the introductory Beach Boys sigh, and Dilla-tinged, one step forward, two steps back beatmaking, "Blessa" is the sound of slow but steady progress-- and that's preferable to one more hypnagogic ode to lazy, hazy days. --Brandon Soderberg

74. Sade

"Soldier of Love"

[Epic]

In an age when artists are expected to maintain a steady stream of new music and obsessively update fans about their every move, Sade is the calm at the eye of the storm, musically and commercially. The beloved but elusive R&B group led by the singer of the same name heralded their first album in a decade with few interviews, videos, or TV appearances, and no tour until next summer, and still sold over a million copies, scoring the number one album in the country for three straight weeks. The lure of the aching title track certainly helped, as it subtly updates Sade's trademark spa seduction soundtrack with military percussion and a sense of fierce but restrained urgency, punctuated by stabs of rock guitar. Simultaneously of the moment and ageless, "Soldier of Love" reminds us of the virtues of self-control. Times may change, but Sade is eternal. --Amy Phillips

73. Wild Nothing

"Chinatown"

[Captured Tracks]

Wild Nothing's "Chinatown" finds just the right mix of melancholy and urgency. The flute-like synths, rollicking percussion, and honeyed vocals on the chorus all shape an astral atmosphere, but there's an air of infinite possibility tangled in all this lushness. "We're not happy 'til we're running away," sings leader Jack Tatum, and the song makes the appeal of escape easy to understand. It calls back to the kind of daydream born of adolescent pining, when hearts are tender and ecstasy is felt most intensely. Swirl it all together and the result is a terribly sad, terribly pretty mix that's wonderfully woozy and sublime. --Zach Kelly

72. No Age

"Glitter"

[Sub Pop]

"Glitter" is a pop song. You can hear which words drummer-singer Dean Spunt is singing (not yelling) into his microphone. There's a longing, universal hook that repeats: "I want you bad underneath my skin." A guitar solo pops up right where we know it should. There's its namesake glam back beat. "Glitter" has a blistered shininess we've never heard from this L.A. duo who are keeping the idea of punk alive and relevant more than just about anyone nowadays. Because while "Glitter" could've been a legitimate alt rock hit when that phrase meant something, No Age have not gone pop. Not at all. After continually exorcising the noise that they broke in on, these two are keeping it punk by keeping their sound moving, shifting, unpredictable. Plus, guitarist Randy Randall's pedal-pushing squeal is the stuff of Mascis and Thurston and Shields-- guitar heroes who know something about turning reckless sound into song. --Ryan Dombal

71. Salem

"King Night"

[IAmSound]

Whether for their inclusion in ill-named subgenres, the morphine-sip rap of Jack Donoghue, or their blatant appropriation of Dirty South snares and cymbals, the ostensibly lazy, extremely loud Midwestern misfits Salem inspired a load of ire in 2010. Butwhat else should you expect from a band that uses its first glimmer of the mainstreamspotlight to corrode "O Holy Night", a two-centuries old Christmas carol aboutChrist as redeemer that doesn't take a Christian to spot? "King Night" lacessynthesizer smears and snipped-and-stretched vocals from a choir above drums and bass that look to demolish systems. About three minutes in, thestatic-and-synth destruction open wide, revealing the carol's chorus intact, hinting atredemption that instantly evaporates. The vocals get buried, the drums roll in, and thespirit of Salem-- too decidedly sinister for laziness-- shines. --Grayson Currin

70. NDF

"Since We Last Met"

[DFA]

NDF's debut single for the DFA label, "Since We Last Met", floats for nearly 11 minutes in a film-grain loop appropriate for a song about the passage of time. With production from producer Bruno Pronsato and vocals from the D.C.-based Sergio Giorgini, the song seems imbued with a sort of thoughtful wistfulness. The percussion is a subdued heartbeat rush, a palpable recollection of a stronger, now-distant excitement. This thrill is tempered by the emotions that well to the surface with each lightly tapping chord, capturing an elusive poignancy that hits like a catch in the back of your throat. The production suggests contradictory emotions, while the half-spoken vocals are reminiscent of Luomo's snatches of conversation, a place where words imply more than their literal meanings. The song mirrors that feeling where something uneventful and casual on the surface conceals a tangle of feelings happening in a conflicting rush below the surface. --David Drake

69. Woods

"Suffering Season"

[Woodsist]

Vibe has always come easy to Woods. Since their earliest improv-heavy jams, the Brooklyn-based psych-folk group has demonstrated a gift for eerie psychedelic murk. That they turned out to be awesome songwriters is just an added bonus. "Suffering Season", from the band's most recent full-length, At Echo Lake, finds them batting high in both games. Here weirdo chops are perfectly wedded to jangling hooks. "To rise past the suffering season, hold it back up now and let it begin," sings Jeremy Earl, his wavering voice made liquid with tremolo and delay. "Who knows what tomorrow might bring?" A fuzz-frazzled 12-string lead adorns a chorus of Phil Spector-style "oohs." It's a fully sing-along-able tune made all the more expansive through the band's perfectly pruned taste for noise. --Aaron Leitko

68. Kingdom [ft. Shyvonne]

"Mind Reader"

[Acephale / Fool's Gold]

You get about 45 seconds warning from Ezra Rubin-- aka Kingdom-- before "Mind Reader" explodes in your hands. At that point, it's too late to duck or cover, and all you can do is lean into it, bear the brunt of the blow. Stacking dubstep, diva house, Jock Jams, and what sounds like a couple cash registers humping, "Mind Reader" is a blast to the head, powered along by the sheer kinetic force of its many moving parts. As Rubin folds more and more buzzes and whirrs into the pinball machine of a mix, Shyvonne cooly loses her patience with a partner expecting a little too much clairvoyance. At times the madcap, every-direction-at-once production threatens to spin itself out, lose its center, but Shyvonne's increasingly insistent pleas-- and Kingdom's slingshot reflexes-- holds the track together through every breathless second. When it ends, you'll find yourself asking just what was that while picking the shrapnel from your teeth. C-crazy. --Paul Thompson

67. Drake

"Over"

[Young Money / Cash Money]

Popular rap and R&B is a slash-and-burn game right now. Find a crooner who can sorta sing and kinda rap and stick him on anything and everything until he tumbles into self-parody-- and then, drop him. Think: T-Pain. Drake has so far successfully avoided that same fate by releasing a cogent debut album, and maintaining a relationship with quasi-in-house producers like Boi-1da who put together the regal, marching band clatter of "Over". Everybody from Eminem to Diggy Simmons to G-Side's 2 Lettaz were far more compelling over this beat than Drake, but the king of hashtag rappers ("I can teach you how to speak my language-- Rosetta Stone") sounds great and comfortable on the thing, and in this context, that's far more important than straight-killing it. --Brandon Soderberg

66. The National

"Bloodbuzz Ohio"

[4AD]

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The National aren't a singles band; not just because their albums are so cohesive but because individual tracks within those albums rarely leap out from the pack as being the kind of thing you'd want to hear between "Wut" and "Power". Still, the superlative High Violet deserves to be spotlighted in as many ways as possible, so we might as well isolate the album's first single and one of its more musically buoyant tunes, "Bloodbuzz Ohio". It's as perfect a distillation of the National's essence as you're going to find, particularly the way the band creates tension between its surface composure and its lyrical anxiety. Like most of the National's songs, "Bloodbuzz Ohio" is unflappable on its face, as Matt Berninger suavely croons while the rest of the band swells and ebbs with gentlemanly grace. The words, however, paint a picture of regret, dislocation, and even financial hardship. Berninger dresses impeccably as per usual in the song's video, whilst intoning with pitch-perfect irony, "I still owe money/ To the money/ To the money I owe." --Joshua Love

65. Dum Dum Girls

"Jail La La"

[Sub Pop]

One of the dominant sounds of independent music in the past few years has been 60s girl-group pop swathed in a cocoon of distortion. And while anyone with a fuzz pedal can get the "noise" part of noise-pop right, few bands get the bubblegum-earworm sweetness and tough-chick posturing of the "pop" part as right as Dum Dum Girls, the former solo project and current quartet led by songwriter Kristen Gundred (call her Dee Dee, please; she likes to stay in character). Some of the credit for "Jail La La"'s success goes to producer Richard Gottehrer, the co-writer of "My Boyfriend's Back" and "I Want Candy"-- it helps, when aiming for a specific sound, to go right to the source. But the real star of the show is Dee Dee, who wrangles a tale of landing in jail and longing for someone to tell her "baby" that she needs bailing out into a tight, propulsive jangle plumped by her teen-dream coo. Lo-fi has rarely sounded so full. --Rebecca Raber

64. Alicia Keys

"Un-Thinkable (I'm Ready)"

[J]

Alicia Keys always puts out one perfect song per album. She reminds me of Billy Joel, with her corniness and piano loungeness and deep affection for New York clichés. But I never deny when she's on point, so if I judge her too harshly for not being able to always replicate "Fallin'", it's just a testament to that song setting the bar impossibly high for the rest of her career. Drake co-wrote it, and freed from having to pretend for his rap bros that he's a misogynist (I see you, Drake) goes deeper than ever into female pleasure and earnestness. Given his much expressed affection for Aaliyah, this is probably Drake's attempt at an Aaliyah song, tailored to Alicia's very different specific strengths. That said, this song is erotic city. It's an instant babymaking classic. Skittering beats, trembling synths, deep piano chord progressions, and floating drums. It sounds like it was recorded in a downtempo underwater sex chamber or inside a neon motel sign. It belongs on the Art Laboe Connection forever, with Sade and Minnie Riperton and other sensual heavyweights. It is the eye of the quiet storm. --Molly Lambert

63. Broken Social Scene

"World Sick"

[Arts & Crafts]

For a band composed of something like 17 members, Broken Social Scene rarely aim to overwhelm. So, when they returned with their first proper album in five years (following a pair of "Broken Social Scene Presents" solo discs from founders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning), it makes sense that they would open it with a nearly seven-minute long song that floats in like a breeze and never hits harder than some light cymbal crashes. Another signature BSS trick: for all that restraint, they still manage to make a lasting impression, and carve out a lot of sonic space. The verses slip forward, punctuated by sharp echoing guitar couplets, Drew's vocals a kind of seductive apathy (not just "world sick every time I take a stand," but so tired that he's even "sick of the self love"), the choruses gently swell and spray and then recede to almost nothing again. And after seven minutes, that nothing stays echoing in your head. --Eric Grandy

62. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

"Bottled in Cork"

[Matador]

Almost once per album now, Ted Leo will pen a song that ends up some of that year's most potent travel writing. Songs like "The Ballad of the Sin Eater" gained half its velocity from a litany of foreign names and tricky pronunciation, but "Bottled" is more about finding common ground. The song's structure cleverly mirrors its own lyrics, with it's nervous, word-crammed opening seconds soon giving way to communal call-and response, over which the rabble-rouser and proud New Jerseyan Leo stops sweating the state of the world and is even willing to lie about his hometown for the sake of smoothing over a hurdle in conversation. But it's all OK, because he knows that the real equalizer in foreign relations is not geography or current events, but booze--years of "psychic damage" and political anguish are drowned out by a refrain to get the bartender's attention. For the next three minutes and change, forget your town and its borders, forget what's on the news, put away your passport, pop a bottle, raise your glass and say, "Prost!" --Jason Crock

61. Tyler the Creator [ft. Hodgy Beats]

"French"

[self-released]

They said a lot of really noxious and vile shit on their records this year, but Odd Future Wolf Gang never sounded more effectively evil than Tyler the Creator and Hodgy Beats do on "French". Credit a lot of that to the beat alone, which is a lurching menace: a speaker-corroding bass line prowls the low end while serrated snares pummel off the beat from above. Over it, Tyler rasps dementedly about doing coke at 17, calls himself "Wolverine's stepson," and engages in a series of vividly described, morally indefensible acts of sexual violence (Goldilocks and Mary are implicated). Filthy, nasty, repellent, and undeniable: in just four minutes, Tyler and his cohorts have left an indelible smear on your consciousness, implicating you with the same leering brilliance of the early Eminem they so clearly worship. --Jayson Greene

60. Panda Bear

"Slow Motion"

[Paw Tracks]

Panda Bear's 2007 release Person Pitch is still a daily listening staple for an entire generation of weirdos, and in our post-"My Girls" world, a lot of people are paying attention to Animal Collective's every move. It's a heavytime for the band, but possibly heaviest of all for Noah Lennox, who has emerged as the engine for the group's most accessible music. So how do you follow Person Pitch? "Slow Motion", from the first in a series of 7" singles, takes Lennox's sound in a darker direction. Built on a hypnotic, dub-inflected drum break, the track finds Lennox's familiar, comforting vocals floating in monastic calm. It begins, moves from stark melody to rich harmony, and then before you know it, it's over, and the only thing that seems right is pressing play again. --Sam Hockley-Smith

59. Twin Sister

"All Around and Away We Go"

[Domino]

"All Around And Away We Go" is thick with atmosphere, but everything else about it is airy and light, if not outright weightless. The bass groove has the slick gestural quality of fashion illustration, amazingly fluid and subtle in its suggestion of an almost unnatural elegance and sophistication. Andrea Estella's breathy, ecstatic vocals further amp up the song's perfumed, sensually teasing quality, but the raw sexuality comes through in the guitar, which shifts from a clicking disco rhythm in the verses to a dreamy clatter during the bridge. It's an extremely well-crafted song, but you probably won't ever spend your time listening to it focused on its construction. Instead, you either get lost in its lovely haze, or wonder how this young band ever managed to come up with a blissed-out psychedelic variation on the Andrea True Connection's "More More More". --Matthew Perpetua

58. Oneohtrix Point Never [ft. Antony]

"Returnal"

[Editions Mego]

On the album that shares its name, "Returnal" is a mesmerizing drift of repeatingsynthesizer lines that wrap like gauze around Daniel Lopatin's vocoder. But the song feels subservient to the sound, with Lopatin's message and motive woven into the melody. This version, pulled from a limited edition 7" release, is a total overhaul, with guest vocalist Antony Hegarty recastingthe New England electronics wizard as a patient songwriter and arranger. Lopatin's pianolines plod and scatter, grounding Hegarty's ascendant croon with patience. Hegarty hascollaborated often in the last decade-- with Björk and Lou Reed on his own albums, andon records by Rufus Wainwright, Hercules & Love Affair and a dozen othes-- but he'srarely sounded so at home inside someone else's words. Lopatin's quest for renewal and hope resonate with Hegarty's recent, environmentally driven works. "My desire to see thelight," he sings, doubling the line for emphasis, "my desire to be pure." Taken together,those words-- pure and light-- befit this take. --Grayson Currin

57. The Fresh & Onlys

"Waterfall"

[In the Red]

The Fresh & Onlys have always had a way with mixing noise and melody, but they've never recorded a song quite as shimmering as "Waterfall". A dramatic electric guitar line scales up the fretboard while the strummed acoustic behind it evokes waves crashing against a wall of rocks, and ghostly-but-gorgeous backing vocals float in and out. Frontman Tim Cohen's lyrics tackle being in the middle of a tug-of-war between the warring media devices of our everyday lives, and the disconnect we feel when not knowing exactly what to believe. By the chorus, Cohen decides to forgo it all. "Fall with me into the waterfall," he sings amid a climactic wall of sound. Out of the slew of garage bands roaming the underground rock landscape these days, the Fresh & Onlys do romance better than any of them. --Martin Douglas

56. Joker

"Tron"

[Kapsize]

Joker's always been more than capable of providing a fully-realized suite of ideas in his tracks, whether it's a g-funk-reinventing tour de force like "Purple City" or just a slick cut-up job of the Metal Gear Solid 3 theme on "Snake Eater". But sometimes, all you really need is a bassline. The one in "Tron" is, to put it delicately, fucking bonkers: hoover synths turn feral, stomping with a menacing shudder that sounds like it could've been written by Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler and then shelved for being too unnerving. It drops hilariously, too-- after a minute of crystalline synth-funk lulls you into wondering if it's going to be one of his more stripped-down slow jams, that wobble smashes through the wall Kool-Aid Man-style. The bass does subside every so often, and without it you can more clearly hear one of the year's better-constructed dubstep backbeats, all surgical hi-hats and bracing 808 handclaps. But with that bass, watch the hell out. --Nate Patrin

55. Lady Gaga [ft. Beyoncé]

"Telephone"

[Cherrytree / Interscope]

"Telephone" is one of the less weird tracks on The Fame Monster, a stuttering Eurodance confection about the First World Problem of cell/text communication in the club, featuring a brief cameo by Beyoncé at her (Sasha) fiercest. But with Lady Gaga, the music itself is often just the side dish to the sumptuous entree that is her ever-evolving freakshow image. And thus, the "Telephone" video made the song iconic by association. "Telephone" cast Gaga and Beyoncé as a funhouse mirror Thelma & Louise, mashing up women's prison sexploitation, Broadway musicals, Tarantino, and feminist rage into the most fun, most ridiculous, and arguably best music video of the year. Without it, we might never have known that cigarette sunglasses and phone receiver hair curlers exist. --Amy Phillips

54. Vampire Weekend

"White Sky"

[XL]

Vampire Weekend's music is too likable to make the band as divisive as it's become; even the experiments are supported by rock-solid new wave hookcraft. It's the vocab-drunk obscurity of Ezra Koenig's story-songs that have proven to be the band's selling or sticking point, depending on whether you fall into the "pro" or "con" camp, and "White Sky" is one of Koenig's showiest performances yet. As usual, his wordplay might seem brick-dense on the page, with cultural references both high and low. But Koenig's become a master of the kind of melodies that only reveal their intricacies once you really start paying attention. The verses are so fluidly arranged, supported by the band's minimalist techno-meets-highlife bounce, that they're almost a lesson in smoothing out knotty lyrics until they hit with the directness of the best pop songs. And that's not even counting the simple, ecstatic pleasures of one of the year's best wordless choruses. --Jess Harvell

53. Kendal Johansson

"Blue Moon"

[Sincerely Yours]

This Big Star cover from Sweden's Kendal Johansson came from out of nowhere. Carried along on the heft of a yawning drum mulch, it ebbs with bird noises and creeping atmospherics before a big vocal that ratchets up the drama of the original a few notches. Johansson's room-filler is a (very) distant relative to Alex Chilton's quietly yearning strain, but gentle melancholy still trails his voice. Its widescreen arrangement, comprised of soft guitar, piano, synth strings, and mammoth drums, could sound schmaltzy in the wrong hands, but Johansson flips the score, coaxing the heart of devotion in the song to the surface and allowing it to ripple there for a moment before the song fades away. Boldly economical, it ends way too soon but leaves an indelible mark on the silence that replaces it. --Hari Ashurst

52. Lindstrøm & Christabelle

"Lovesick"

[Smalltown Supersound]

This is one of the least likely Cadillac jingles in history. Just a few years back, Hans-Peter Lindstrøm crafted a retro-futurist masterpiece in his debut full-length, Where You Go I Go Too. But he pulled trump card when he announced he'd be making an album of pop tunes with a Mauritian woman singing lead. Here, Lindstrøm plays a frittering Moroder-type producer while Christabelle vamps Donna Summer, but the collaboration also recalls the friendship of No Wave pioneers Richard Hell and his literary muse Lizzy Mercier Descloux. Like Descloux, Christabelle barges like a tornado into Lindstrøm's beats, lilting her unaffected, almost quizzical speak-singing as Lindstrøm frantically works to construct a backdrop, barely managing to accompany her temperament with a palm-muted 95 bpm set piece. --Mike Orme

51. Smith Westerns

"Weekend"

[Fat Possum]

You don't have to look very far to notice the pending Britpop revival: Blur reunited to great fanfare last year, and Pulp is next. Suede got a sympathetic re-look with this year's best-of collection, and the final active bands from the era, Oasis and Supergrass, have finally called it quits, placing a tombstone on the era and opening the door to re-evalation. And now here comes Chicago's Smith Westerns with a sound indebted to the bright-eyed, buoyant Supergrass model of Britpop. And just as Supergrass were upon arrival, Smith Westerns are young, exuberant, and fueled by optimism and imagination; in love with the possibilities of life rather than navigating its obstacles. So here is the new Smith Westerns sound, stripping away the glam and boogie from T. Rex, and here is also the first great indie pop song of 2011. Sure, it hit the web last month, but the album drops in the new year, and this one has "springtime" written all over it. --Scott Plagenhoef

50. Cults

"Go Outside"

[Forest Family]

Cults quietly debuted their invigorating first single "Go Outside" on Bandcamp, without so much as a MySpace or a Facebook page listeners could use to mine for details about them. The low-key introduction was notable not just for injecting some much needed mystery into an era in which we know so much about our over-accessible pop stars that we even see camera-phone pictures of their junk, but because the song itself-- which recalls both brightly twee, glockenspiel-happy Swedish pop and the simple, nostalgia-inducing melody of the Faces' classic "Ooh La La"-- sparked immediate interest in the group. The New York band has since gone public and signed to a major label (which guarantees some serious spotlight glare), but with more songs like this one, they'll continue to hold our interest for two or three minutes, rather than 140 characters, at a time. --Rebecca Raber

49. ceo

"Come With Me"

[Modular / Sincerely Yours]

The CEO is, with good reason, a popular bogeyman, a puppeteer buffered from the consequences of his decisions by golden penthouses and parachutes. Weirdly, that makes ceo a perfect name for the Tough Alliance member Eric Berglund's solo project, a cocoon of carefree dance-pop untouched by street-level problems. Berglund's best song, "Come with Me", is a dreamily temperate ode to escapism. With bubbly synths and a wistful piano bridge sandwiched between a gleaming, fluffy top layer and skittering bottom, it's like candy made from five kinds of candy. There's a sugary ache in Berglund's voice, and a shrewd note, too: He's inviting you from a place they call "reality" to "a place I call reality." This is an invitation to choose a world where we can have it all, even for a few blissful minutes, over one where we probably have less than we'd like; a proposition that's hard to resist. --Brian Howe

48. Best Coast

"When I'm With You"

[Mexican Summer]

"When I'm With You" launches straight into the invincible feeling of a brand new relationship. Bombs could be going off, there could be an earthquake, the world might be crazy, but this kind of us-against-the-world tunnelvision is a universally relatable sentiment. Best Coast's take on this well-worn pop trope works so well because of Bethany Cosentino's directness: Her vocals, set against reverb-soaked guitar chords, are utterly sincere, self-assured, and shouted to the rooftops. That ability to effortlessly communicate the rush of newfound love, to briefly infect her listeners with that feeling, is her greatest strength. Where lyrics like, "When I'm with you I have fun," and "I hate sleeping alone," might seem trite or obvious on paper, Cosentino delivers them with a lovestruck swoon so affecting, we can't help but d'awww. --Hari Ashurst

47. Beach House

"Walk in the Park"

[Sub Pop]

On their first two records, Beach House made lovers' rock for basements. Their albums were muted, dusty crawlspaces that you entered alone and lingered until you were ready to face the world. On their Sub Pop debut, Teen Dream, they let all the air in on this sound at once, amplifying the intimacy at its heart. "Walk in the Park" was at once its saddest and most cinematic moment. Victoria Legrand's indelible chorus, a six-note wail of failed ascent tugged downward by the chord progression, embodied the album's tone: you can be just as gorgeously miserable walking in the crisp fall air as you were sitting in your bedroom, and Beach House prove that they're more than capable of soundtracking your heartbreak wherever you take it. --Jayson Greene

46. The Knife [ft. Mt. Sims and Planningtorock]

"Colouring of Pigeons"

[Mute / Rabid]

If you're going to go from creating claustrophobic electronic pop music to writing an opera based on the notebooks of Charles Darwin, you might as well fully commit to the audacity of such a move and release an 11-minute teaser track. But as "Colouring of Pigeons" shows, the Knife took to (as the group's Olof Dreijer described it) the "pretentious and dramatic gestures" of opera with ease. The shambling backing track of strings, drums and cymbals might be new to the Knife, but the piece's ominous theatricality is most certainly not. Both Olof and Karin Dreijer Andersson are right at home in this skin, turning the mundane details of Darwin's ornithological observations into haunting, fractured poetry. --David Raposa

45. Gorillaz

"On Melancholy Hill"

[Virgin]

In recent years, Damon Albarn has been aging gracefully into a pop culture role that extends far beyond his provincial Britpop persona. He's done that in part by either sharing or ceding the spotlight to a revolving door of eclectic collaborators. Luckily for longtime Blur fans, he reserved the best song on Plastic Beach as a showcase for his own voice. Albarn's performance on the lovesick ballad "On Melancholy Hill" is wistful and understated enough that he sounds overwhelmed at the center of his own buzzing synthpop symphony. The contrast between his weathered, weary tone and the bright notes that carry the main hook is surprisingly beautiful, like garish commercial lighting that ends up appearing romantic in spite of itself. --Matthew Perpetua

44. Das Racist

"hahahaha jk?"

[Mad Decent / Greedhead / Mishka]

Das Racist mock hip-hop because they love it. They're the guys who'll make a joke out of anything, but like all great satirists, still take their role seriously. This track off Sit Down, Man, their second mixtape of 2010, is as close as they've come to a statement of purpose, i.e. a statement of ambiguity. They're working in a field whose audience is hung up on authenticity, so that's the button they keep pushing from both sides: extreme rap insider references ("Ice-T plus Coco"!), extreme rap outsider references (Dwight Schrute!), and jabs about race and class wrapped up in copious lolz. Are they in or out? Well, in enough that "hahahaha"'s got a beat from Boi-1da, the same guy who's produced a bunch of Drake's hits-- even if that beat is a freaking "Days of Our Lives" parody. --Douglas Wolk

43. Waka Flocka Flame

"Hard in Da Paint"

[Warner Bros.]

Much like Waka Flocka Flame, roundballers Charles Oakley and Rick Mahorn went hard in the motherfuckin' paint and were vilified by purists for turning a sweet science into a headbanger's ball. Of course, NBA fans remember them now because they recognized the effectiveness of focused intimidation, and what we have here from Waka is a master class in sonic domination. Producer Lex Luger once again sounds like he's making beats for the Decepticon Francis Scott Key, and most of the rappers talking shit about Flocka on Twitter have entire albums with fewer memorable lines than this one packs into five minutes. But the song's greatest lesson is a point lost on so many others: a rapper doesn't have to be everything to everybody all at once. --Ian Cohen

42. Japandroids

"Younger Us"

[Polyvinyl]

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Japandroids' slept-on between-LPs single "Younger Us" touches on something essential to rock music that too few bands these days even attempt: encapsulating the spirit and romance of youth. It makes sense: Hip-hop and electronic R&B are basically the sounds of youth culture now, and although Japandroids are taking a rearview approach to their lives here, they aren't doing it with heavy sighs, misty eyes, or the trappings of reflective, so-called mature rock. They're still putting their heads down and rocking, refusing to intellectualize skin touching skin for the first time or choosing beer over sleep-- the kind of shit that seems so simple when you spell it out, but can be so profound in the moment when you're living it. No grief, all joy... memories are made of this. --Scott Plagenhoef

41. Deerhunter

"Helicopter"

[4AD]

Pretty and unabashedly earnest, "Helicopter" flirts with melodrama. Whenever I hear its slow prom-dance lilt and maudlin lyrics, I think of Sonic Youth's winking take on the Carpenters' soft-rock classic "Superstar". But Sonic Youth's love for that song was sincere, and so is Cox's aching interpretation of a truly sad Dennis Cooper story about a Russian teen lost in the worlds of sex slavery and mafia violence. What pushes "Helicopter" beyond mere sentimentality are the evocative simplicity of Cox's pithy verse ("They don't pay like they used to pay/ I used to make it day to day") and the swirl of electronic debris that grounds the arena-sized chords. The result is emotion that's universal without being generic. Even if you haven't read Cooper's story, "Helicopter" will make you feel it in your bones. --Marc Masters

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40. Janelle Monáe

"Cold War"

[Bad Boy / Wondaland Arts Society]

Janelle Monáe became a breakthrough critical darling in 2010, thanks in large part to her dizzying ambition, far-flung musical appetites, and daring unpredictability. It sounds like your standard story of artistic triumph, but Monáe's road hasn't been an easy one. She effortlessly defies lots of unspoken but pernicious expectations of her race and gender, and there's no doubt it's made it difficult for her to find true acceptance in any community. "Cold War" is not only the most straightforward moment on the multifarious The ArchAndroid, it's also the most affecting, a testament of Monáe's unshakable faith in herself and her art despite the world's baseness and limitations. "I was made to believe there's something wrong with me," she confesses, and you don't have to see the tears in her eyes in the song's arresting, single-take video to feel the layers of struggle and self-reliance behind that line. --Joshua Love

39. No Age

"Fever Dreaming"

[Sub Pop]

It was a point of debate for several weeks at P4K HQ whether No Age's Dean Spunt shouts "Fever dreaming!" or "Keep on dreamin'!" in the fiery climax of this standout from the L.A. noise-punk duo's latest full length, Everything in Between. Both make sense, since "Fever Dreaming" is a shit-kicking anthem on a record about feeling bored and defeated, and persevering regardless. Marvel at Spunt's controlled intensity as he barks lyrics and bashes his drum kit half to death. But what really makes "Fever Dreaming" a true achievement is its impeccable fusion of screeching clatter and big-tent melodic appeal and that brain-burned howling feedback figure channels the attitude of Pete Townshend's windmill strum. No Age: stadium fillers? Keep on dreamin', keep on dreamin. --Larry Fitzmaurice

38. Hot Chip

"One Life Stand"

[Astralwerks]

For guys who barely play guitars, Hot Chip still know a thing or two about a killer riff, and the sneakily catchy "One Life Stand" contains one of their best, a synth line so comically arch you could picture Dick Dastardly twirling his mustache to it. One of Hot Chip's primary talents has always been their ability to flip the comedic into the sublime, and they do an exemplary job of that here, piling chord changes and slinky counter-riffs on top of the original until they've built an intricate machine. All this while lead singer and principle songwriter Alexis Taylor strikes the right balance between winsome and artful and the band somehow make Caribbean steel drums and motorik disco sound right together. --Mark Pytlik

37. Jay Electronica

"Exhibit C"

[Decon / The Dogon Society]

On "Exhibit C", Jay Electronica peppers his Nas-like rhymes with lived-in, specific nods to East Coast cities, calls-out rappers for stealing the South's slang (Jay is originally from New Orleans), references Marcus Garvey, Nikola Tesla, and MGMT in just a few lines, and name-drops insider buddies Q-Tip and Diddy. He's all over the place-- as the most widely praised and enigmatic rapper of the last few years should be. And Just Blaze's wailing soul beat has a nice dose of lively, Vegas grandeur to it that helped smuggle this roaming, rap samurai tale onto satellite radio for most of the year, and for a short time there, onto Clear Channel-approved rap playlists too. It's Jay-Z's "Show Me What You Got", only it doesn't suck. --Brandon Soderberg

36. Arcade Fire

"Ready to Start"

[Merge]

With its bouncing-ball bassline and galloping gait, "Ready to Start" at first sounds like it was simply spliced from the DNA of previous Arcade Fire snap-along jaunts like the whole of "Keep the Car Running" and the northern-soul close of "Wake Up". But the mood this time is decidedly less joyous, and much more anxious. From its title on down, "Ready to Start" is all about unrequited anticipation: Win Butler's protagonist declares his intent to leave the rat race behind for a girl who just wants to be friends; likewise, the song charges through three verses-- with Butler's desperation becoming more pronounced with each of promise of "I would"-- only to break down just as Butler works up the nerve to shout out the title. If The Suburbs is fueled by a need for escape, nowhere else on the album does that desire feel so urgent yet so impossible to fulfill. --Stuart Berman

35. Rihanna

"Rude Boy"

[Def Jam]

Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry appeared to be the pop stars who dominated 2010, but it was Rihanna who had four No. 1 singles-- three of them excellent, the other one featuring Eminem. Of course the Em one, which openly referenced the physical abuse Rihanna suffered, received the bulk of the attention. If you're a pop star, your personal horrors, or foibles, or trivialities, or redemption, or quarrels with "Sesame Street" are what gets you in the news. But it's a run of singles like "Rude Boy", "What's My Name?", "Only Girl (In the World)"-- not to mention the David Guetta Eurohit "Who's That Chick" and 2009 leftovers "Hard" and "Run This Town"-- that secures your legacy long after the tablogs are done guessing whether this or that song of yours was written for Taylor Lautner.

It can take a lot of time for people to catch up with even the best pop songs, but ones so openly sexually aggressive as "Rude Boy" tend to take even longer, and so-- underrated and dismissed as fluff compared to most of post-abuse record Rated R-- it was left to slowly grow in stature over the year. In the end, amidst the darker hues that colored Rated R, it was the Technicolor "Rude Boy" that best indicated that the singer was turning a new page in her life, heading toward a career year and once again in charge behind closed doors. --Scott Plagenhoef

34. Gold Panda

"You"

[Ghostly]

It was a pretty big year for abstracted vocal samples and beatific, downtempo collage music, but Derwin Panda was the only producer to turn a second-person pronoun into an anthem. Making a type of music where nuance and detail are paramount, Panda stands out as the producer most willing to bludgeon you with a really kickass sample. And so it goes with the staccato repetitions of the song's title and its stabbing synth responses. It is the yippiest song of the year; you get the impression your little cousin would love to jump around the room to this (the PS22 children's choir would turn this into a supernova of chirp). It is immediate: the sample here is not teasing out the vagaries of memory or twisting into knots. These are not "ghost voices." Instead, it's a celebration, and you know of who. --Andrew Gaerig

33. Zola Jesus

"Night"

[Sacred Bones]

Rip out the bleeding, beating heart of "Night" and you're left holding a good old fashioned power ballad, the kind of thing an airbrushed pop starlet and slick Hollywood producer could conceivably turn into the love theme from a blockbuster disaster movie. ("Don't be afraid/ Don't be alarmed/ In the end of the night/ You're in my arms.") Which makes this goth torch song even more deliciously creepy: Its haunted house atmospherics seem to conspire to both seduce and dismember, as if something nasty from the depths of hell is constantly trying and failing to brutally murder its innate prettiness. At this stage of Zola Jesus' blossoming career, "Night" offers principal Nika Roza Danilova a choice of rabbit holes. Will she clean up and aim for the big time, allowing her gigantic, husky voice to shine through unencumbered? Or will she descend further into an experimental underworld where noisy sheen often overwhelms content? --Amy Phillips

32. Robyn

"Hang With Me"

[Konichiwa / Cherrytree / Interscope]

Like so many of Robyn's songs, "Hang With Me" is a playlet that's dramatic in scope and story, a monologue that sums up a complex situation in just over four minutes. Over thrumming synths and an insistent bass drum, she lays out the terms of a relationship with the no-bullshit ultimatum of a woman who knows she's not indestructible. Even as the vocoder makes her voice pulsate like a strobe light, Robyn sounds achingly human-- not the fembot she sometimes plays, but the tough-but-vulnerable club girl she is at heart. "I know what's on your mind, there will be time for that, too," she concedes; sex is rarely handled with as much adult understatement and pop eloquence, although it's certainly tempting to read much more than that into the line. There will also be time for heartbreak, recrimination, betrayal, acrimony. But for now she has the contentment of that rush of a chorus, which conflates a simple need for no-drama companionship into something human and monumental. --Stephen M. Deusner

31. Girls

"Carolina"

[True Panther]

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The fun thing about listening to Girls is that, knowing frontman Christopher Owens' sheltered backstory, it's distinctly plausible that he's only just now discovering a lot of artists we all take for granted. Even if that's not true, though, he's still got an impossible combination of world-weariness and wide-eyed naïveté and a love-- above all else-- for pure song craft. "Carolina" is a daunting, nearly eight-minute journey through lilting shoegaze and doo-wop and early-'90s monotone guitar rock. The fact that Owens and co. manage to blend all these elements seamlessly into an appealing whole is one thing, that they do it so beautifully is borderline transcendent. --Sam Hockley-Smith

30. The-Dream

"Yamaha"

[Def Jam]

With each successive album, R&B singer and songwriter-to-the-stars The-Dream retreats further into his interior soundworld, an overripe, post-coital haze of lush synths, snapping beats, sighing harmonies, and unsubtle sexual innuendo. This process has mixed results for his songwriting, but on "Yamaha" the pay-off is undeniable. The tune's sonic and thematic indebtedness to Prince's "Little Red Corvette" is explicit and obvious, but what continues to surprise on the hundredth listen is how The-Dream-- or anyone-- could intensify that ecstatic pop blueprint so dramatically. It's hard to think of another contemporary musician whose grasp of pop alchemy is so intuitive, or so affecting. --Tim Finney

29. James Blake

"CMYK"

[R&S]

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If your introduction to James Blake was the knowledge that the 22-year-old British producer sampled 90s hip-hop and R&B in spans of three or four minutes, you might've rightfully flinched at the thought of a dubstep Girl Talk. But where Girl Talk's mash-ups attempt to zap as many nerves as possible with a stream of ephemera and excerpts, Blake-- especially on the four-track EP, CMYK-- lifts slight, smart samples and molds them into pop songs worthy of their own notice. "CMYK" borrows from Aaliyah and Kelis but uses them more as instruments-- both have intriguing voices, after all-- than impulses. They chatter beneath his propulsive drums and become the songbirds above his bass-and-keyboard throb. Blake uses samples, then, not as beats to be dangled for nostalgia; rather, he uses them to synthesize what sounds like a stunning future. --Grayson Currin

28. Yeasayer

"O.N.E"

[Secretly Canadian]

Yeasayer's second album was a hard one to figure out. It was certainly audacious, and its positivity was admirable, but it was also at times overstuffed, disorganized, and cloying. Hitting right in the middle of the album,"O.N.E." was the song that undeniably got everything right. It's stuffed for sure, but in this case the stuffing is a stunning number of catchy rhythms, riffs and melodies, wedded to a surging update of 80s synth-pop aesthetics. The song's internal momentum builds as it goes along-- every section feels like an elastic band stretching out to fire you into the next one, and that sense of propulsion carries through even the gently swelling interludes. It's always satisfying when a band gets everything right, and "O.N.E." is the sound of Yeasayer hitting all its marks. --Joe Tangari

27. Four Tet

"Angel Echoes"

[Domino]

While pretty much everyone can cut up vocals these days, distressingly few artists do it while attributing even a little bit of significance to the relationship between the voice, language, and meaning. But Four Tet, for his part, managed to make good on a track titled, portentously, "Angel Echoes". As an album-opening salvo, it introduced the rich There Is Love in You by way of a looped vocal squiggle that sounds like part of an atomized hymn, with real beauty and majesty serving what could otherwise be merely a paean to the abstract electronicist's process. There's more to it than that, though-- and enough to distract from the fact that, on a rhythm-happy album by a rhythm-happy artist, the "beat" is nothing but a gentle cymbal tap that goes on and on, gently in the background. --Andy Battaglia

26. Cee-Lo

"Fuck You"

[Elektra]

How an instant classic works in 2010: a YouTube lyric video gets posted on 4,500 blogs and racks up two million clicks in its first five days online. William Shatner sings it, 50 Cent remixes it, Cee-Lo himself performs it on every talk show known to man. The official music video is viewed online 29 million times. It gets nominated for four Grammys, including Record and Song of the Year. Everybody and their mom gets it stuck in their heads for months, but nobody minds, because it's one of the most joyful break-up anthems in history, a song so bulletproof, even Gwyneth Paltrow couldn't completely ruin it on "Glee". And yet, so far, it isn't a blockbuster sales-wise, with both the song and its accompanying album barely cracking the top 10 for only a week. But as long as the Internet exists, "Fuck You" will live on, long after anybody remembers what an Xbox or an Atari is. --Amy Phillips

25. The Walkmen

"Angela Surf City"

[Fat Possum]

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Smart bands are wary of repeating their greatest hits to the point of diminishing returns. Really smart bands know they shouldn't avoid returning to their successes entirely, especially if they can tweak them just enough to make them feel new. And so six years after the career-defining howl of regret that was "The Rat", the Walkmen released "Angela Surf City", almost equal in intensity but more than a rewrite. Instead of a frighteningly claustrophobic wall-of-sound, "Angela" moves gracefully from spare verses to furious choruses, frontman Hamilton Leithauser revving from surprising restraint to a pitch of pained romanticism. But if the song bores itself into your brain immediately, it's probably thanks to the fearsome force, precision, and speed of drummer Matt Barrick. His booming surf rock recreation on the verses is the song's best hook, and when he rolls into the choruses, it's as much of a release as Leithauser's yearning yowl. --Jess Harvell

24. Teengirl Fantasy

"Cheaters"

[Merok / True Panther]

In which two Oberlin grads happen upon an old Philly soul song and craft the year's most gorgeous house tune. Love Committee-- a vocal group in the O'Jays/Temptations tradition-- already had a long history of providing raw material for visionary remixers before Teengirl Fantasy discovered their 1977 single "Cheaters Never Win". Once disco was in full swing, Love Committee was being edited by legends like Tom Moulton and Walter Gibbons, whose sublime extensions, stretching jukebox-friendly songs into eight minute mini-symphonies, still hewed to the percussion-and-strings template that was Philadelphia's trademark.

With its deep house synth sweeps, shivering trance-like keyboard effects, and stop-and-start techno percussion, Teengirl Fantasy's rework sounds little like classy analog disco. But by adding just a few snippets of Love Committee in just the right places, TF prove they understand what those early tape-splice geniuses also knew so well: Endlessly pumping beats count for a lot when trying to keep people moving all night. But a little recognizable human joy - or pain, in this case-- still goes a long way when trying to reach dancefloor ecstasy. --Jess Harvell

23. Vampire Weekend

"Giving Up the Gun"

[XL]

In 2009, it was discovered that Vampire Weekend singer Ezra Koenig had, along with a college friend, formed a bedroom group called L'Homme Run that played around with hip-hop, homemade R&B, and pop. And although that description could be applied to any number of underground indie artists in 2010, this was some delicious red meat for the baying crowd of hipsters gleefully holding the supposedly milquetoast Vampire Weekend at arm's length. Vampire Weekend answered their critics the same way they always have: Head on. They went and redid the best L'Homme song and, without changing that much, turned it into "Giving Up the Gun", the best Contra single.

It was another deft example of something Ezra and co. spent a lot of the year doing, running end arounds on their critics by grappling in their music with the issues thrown at them-- only doing it with, you know, a depth of thought and grace along with great hooks and melodies. The result: A hell of a lot of complex, multifaceted songs about who or what's real, who or what we are, and what worrying about this stuff says about you. "Giving Up the Gun" was the most clear, direct example of the group embracing their past instead of putting on poses and disguises but it was hardly the only one; and the act of doing so, of stuffing giddy songs like this one, or contemplative songs like many on Contra, with this sort of richness and self-awareness is one of the indications that they're a singular iconoclastic band, and likely to be one for quite some time. --Scott Plagenhoef

22. Rick Ross [ft. Styles P]

"B.M.F. (Blowin' Money Fast)"

[Def Jam / Maybach]

Rick Ross' career could've ended back in 2008, when the Smoking Gun figured out that he'd spent time as a correctional officer-- a history that makes his many boasts of drug-kingpin immortality look very, very silly. But instead of crawling into a defensive hole, the Rick Ross of "B.M.F." pushes his old fictions even further, taking them past the point of absurdity and actually stealing the identity of some notorious incarcerated gang leaders. "I think I'm Big Meech! Larry Hoover!" he booms. He's obviously nothing like these guys, but it works anyway, mostly because it's such a goddamn catchy chorus, so fun to scream with the windows down.

Lex Luger's track is anthemic thump of the highest order, his twinkling keyboards only highlighting the thunder of the low-end and giving Ross' simplistic bellow all the bombastic noise it needs. Veteran New York hardhead Styles P gives the song an extra kick at the end, delivering a mouth-foaming guest verse that has to be almost entirely bleeped out when the song shows up on the radio. And that, it turns out, is how you turn a public humiliation into a summer rap anthem. --Tom Breihan

21. Azari & III

"Reckless (With Your Love) (Tensnake Remix)"

[Permanent Vacation]

In most histories of dance music, old-school rave is rarely praised for its nuance. It was raw stuff designed simply to make your calves ache, to leave your brain swimming, to make you sweat. But there was another side of rave-- lush enough for the chill-out room, but still funky and ecstatic enough to whip up a massive crowd-- and that's what Azari & III (and their remixer, Tensnake) pay homage to in "Reckless With Your Love".

Each element of the tune will be familiar to anyone who's owned a rave compilation or two-- the "Breaking Bells"/freestyle percussion, the air raid sound effects, the Balearic piano riff, and so on-- but these multiple nostalgia-inducing hooks are woven into the kind of club-ready and bedroom-friendly epic that was as rare in 1990 as it is in 2010. It's a track that's assembled with such loving, luscious attention to detail that you can get a high just laying back and listening, even as the warehouse-rocking groove and that C+C Music Factory quote command you to dance. --Jess Harvell

20. Erykah Badu

"Window Seat"

[Universal Motown]

The lead single from Erykah Badu's New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh was a personal statement, but one to which everyone can relate. "Window Seat" is about wanting to carve out space to think and take care of yourself while also acknowledging the need for human contact. It's about worrying that if you check out for a while, which everyone needs to do from time to time, no one will even know you're gone. The line "Don't want nobody next to me" is followed with "But I need you to want me/ Need you to miss me," and in the tension between these poles lies about 80% of what's difficult in human relationships. That this idea comes packaged in an earthy, elegant, smooth-as-butter soul groove-- the kind of thing that sounds great in the background when you are dreaming alone and equally engaging when you're on the couch with someone who, you hope, feels as deeply for you as you do for them-- is another testament to Badu's singular vision. --Mark Richardson

19. How to Dress Well

"Decisions (feat. Yüksel Arslan)"

[Lefse / Tri Angle]

Despite the ambient qualities of his music, Tom Krell isn't a timid singer, and his soulfulness could never be mistaken for parody. Krell's admiration for R&B history is audible in each ultra-sincere high note. In his music, Krell's long love of soul music is often limited to little quotes and riffs. And the 4AD-on-a-cheap-laptop surface of "Decisions", like all of his songs, places it in a far different continuum than the pinpoint digital perfection of pop R&B, or even the classicist craft of neo-soul. The murky drift of "Decisions", for all its slow-jam worthiness, is not aiming for radio. But when Krell lets loose, you can tell this is a guy whose formative influence wasn't the cracked yearning of Stephen Malkmus but the silky, multi-tracked melisma of SWV.

But what separates Krell from the mainstream 21st century blue-eyed brigade is the way he inverts R&B's tradition of "selling" a love lyric with a delivery that can move the people in the back row. For the listener, the content of "Decisions" seems secondary, if only because it's often so hard to make out the lyrics. The most coherent line is "don't forget to check your cell phone," an absurdly prosaic request given an unexpected emotional punch by the song's heartsick delivery. Applying the lyric-obliterating vocal approach of the Cocteau Twins to music where "good singing" is all about clarity, Krell foregrounds the intimate moments usually embroidered into the backing tracks of pop R&B hits, the moans and murmurs and wordless harmonies. With this smeared delivery, and the song's frizzed-out distortion, Krell creates an intense sense of one-on-one intimacy between performer and listener, something very different than a showboat trying to reach millions via the radio. --Jess Harvell

18. Titus Andronicus

"A More Perfect Union"

[XL]

The phrase "a more perfect union" is part of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, right after the "We the People" bit the Tea Partiers love so much. It's also the title of a speech that then-Sen. Barack Obama gave about race when his primary campaign looked most lost. As an indie rock song by Titus Andronicus, "A More Perfect Union" is ambitious enough for these lofty origins, and as down-to-earth as a college kid's face after one too many Four Lokos.

In other words, this is an anthem for people who hate anthems, at once intensely personal and impossibly grandiose. There's room for the places and experiences of Patrick Stickles' life, from the Garden State Parkway to Somerville, Mass., by way of the Fung Wah bus. There's room for Billy Bragg and New Jersey patron saint Bruce Springsteen. And, in keeping with the grandiose Civil War concept of the album this song opens, there's even room for the Battle Hymn of the Republic. (Stickles' former high school drama teacher is here, too, meticulously reciting Abraham Lincoln.)

Most simply, though, "A More Perfect Union" rocks: a riotous seven minutes of raw-throated passion and ragtag righteousness, fiery guitar interludes and madcap drumming. It's not entirely clear which flag Stickles wants us to "rally around," but anyone who has ever felt the least bit of allegiance to what some marketer once called "Alternative Nation"-- anyone who has ever considered themselves an underdog-- well, please rise. The state of the union could always be more perfect. This song probably couldn't. --Marc Hogan

17. Girl Unit

"Wut"

[Night Slugs]

2010 saw an avalanche of dubstep and bass singles that drew straight from early 90s 'ardkore-- scatter-beat proto-jungle breaks and e-peak hyperventilating synths and diva vocals turned manic spaz-outs and all of that. Many of these singles were obvious, and some of them were great, but one of them just completely hijacked the whole enterprise and scrapped it for parts so it could build something even better. Girl Unit's instant anthem "Wut" took hold so deeply because it managed to replicate the rush of hearing the original progenitors of rave without actually photocopying their blueprints.

The old ingredients are familiar: the pitched-up hook swoops and stammers and provides the insistently slippery title, spelled that way for a reason; the synth melodies pit soaring euphoria against choppy intensity; there's lots of perfectly-timed Pavlovian breakdown-buildup segments that lead into constantly escalating go-apeshit bass drops. But while the spirit of this track is simpatico with old-school rave, the actual rhythmic structure is something else entirely-- the 808s and the slow-ride bounce bring it closer to contemporary Southern hip-hop and R&B, a supple yet hard-hitting beat that earns its air horns. --Nate Patrin

16. Beach House

"Norway"

[Sub Pop]

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Beach House's Teen Dream does not lack for songs that are hypnotic, haunting, gooey, gauzy-- all those words reserved for music that sounds like it was made in air a little bit thicker and more viscous than the air we breathe. But "Norway": That's the one that jumps out the most and, if only for 3:55, buckles any working notion of time, space, continuums, and all that jazz. Like a strange mix of old 60s London psych act White Noise and Fleetwood Mac at their most blessedly and overzealously produced, the song sweeps you off your feet while tripping you up at the same time.

As the third track on Teen Dream, "Norway" works to spin the album off on its centripetal course after a pair of comparatively spare, upright openers. But it would sound startling in any context, with its languid pump-organ churn and Victoria Legrand's blend of breathy and throaty vocals. There are definite referents in there: the ones named above, plus no small amount of My Bloody Valentine and 10cc. But "Norway" did a lot this year to establish Beach House as a band to be dealt with on its own terms, likely for a while to come. --Andy Battaglia

15. Crystal Castles [ft. Robert Smith]

"Not in Love"

[Fiction]

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A much tamer version of "Not in Love" appeared on Crystal Castles' surprisingly strong sophomore album earlier this year and barely seemed to make a dent, so it's mildly surprising that this revamped version, which features a pounding bass drum and guest vocals from a certain Robert Smith, should feel so instantly like a classic. Maybe it's the knowing conflation of forms, the weird Venn diagram of goth rave, pop goth, and hairspray pop afforded by the track's three principles: Crystal Castles, the Cure, and its original composer, 80s Canadian radio rock outfit Platinum Blonde. Or maybe it's the fact that such an arch cover feels sort of like an inside joke that anyone who wasn't glam rock or Canadian enough in the early 80s could never hope to get. Or maybe it's the fact the production/singer combination of the Castles' Ethan Kath with Robert Smith feels dangerously perfect, with Kath's storming synth squalls providing the ideal offset to Smith's precarious and insecure delivery. "Not in Love" is four minutes of inspired casting that's decidedly more than the sum of its parts. It is also very possibly what you wish the Cure actually sounded like in 2010. --Mark Pytlik

14. Sleigh Bells

"Rill Rill"

[N.E.E.T. / Mom & Pop]

Few 2010 sounds were as jubilant as the first few bars of "Rill Rill". Built around a riff sniped from Funkadelic's "Can You Get to That", Derek Miller's guitar-- so fraught and heavy elsewhere on Treats-- goes soft and jangly, tempered only by an electro-crash that sounds a little like rolling thunder: A storm might be inching in, but you're safely huddled under the bleachers with the cutest kid in class. By the time Alexis Krauss sneaks in with a string of barely-there ah-ah-ah's, we're already charmed, teleported somewhere sweeter and more interesting.

With its school-dance melody and childlike vocals, "Rill Rill" might be the track on Treats that your mom's most likely to cite as a jam. But like all of Sleigh Bells' songs, it's also delightfully odd: "Keep thinking about every straight face, yes/ Wonder what your boyfriend thinks about your braces/ What about them, I'm all about them," Krauss sings, in one of the year's weirder moments of self-empowerment. Krauss and Miller like to toy with juxtaposition, mixing the grotesque and the innocent, but here, Krauss' calm, plaintive vocals and Miller's gauzy backing are in perfect sync. --Amanda Petrusich

13. Caribou

"Odessa"

[Merge]

We've come to expect a progression from Dan Snaith with each new album, but "Odessa" is a track no one could have dreamed would come from a Caribou record. Borrowing moves from modern dance-pop acts like Junior Boys as well as avant-disco playfulness from Arthur Russell, "Odessa" oozes anxiety in each of its many layers--those low notes sounding like a depressed trampoline, that triangle, the pitch-shifted vocals with creepy and cavernous-sounding reverb.

Snaith is a fine singer but his performance can't help but sound small compared to distinctive, sometimes overwhelming sounds of the track. Then again, the story he's choosing to tell is just as small: a woman who stands up to years of being mistreated to finally leave. It doesn't sound earth-shattering, but Snaith comes up with a song worthy of that character's anguish, and even the timid delivery fits that story-- the music takes the place of the words and the will she didn't have before. That's part of the reward of "Odessa" once the surprise wears off: As Snaith's bag of tricks grows deeper and his musical tapestry more intricate, his subjects get smaller, simpler, and more human. --Jason Crock

12. LCD Soundsystem

"All I Want"

[DFA / Virgin / Parlophone]

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One half of the emotional core of LCD Soundsystem's This Is Happening, "All I Want" is so huge-sounding that it seems out of control at first. That wailing guitar line is too loud, right? Is the mix off? Nope, listen more and you realize it's exactly how James Murphy (who, despite his perfectionism is a very democratic bandleader) wants it. In Murphy's mind, his voice is no more important than any other instrument, and here the guitar sings lead because it conjures a feeling he can't muster himself. It's supposed to ache like that.

The song wouldn't be an LCD ballad if it wasn't emotionally complex, and here we get the good and bad sides of Murphy. He wants the one he can't have, the only one who really understands him, but instead of just accepting it, he wants her to feel that hurt, too. "All I want is your pity, and all I want is your bitter tears." Rarely has a singer been so vulnerable, so dejected, and such a dick all at the same time. But then the song keeps going skyward, swelling off that guitar and those sparkling synths, and the pain starts to disappear. You lose yourself in the surge. Really sad or really triumphant? It's both. --Joe Colly

11. Deerhunter

"Desire Lines"

[4AD]

Bradford Cox may be Deerhunter's über-prolific, all-blogging mouthpiece, but don't underestimate Lockett Pundt. Read deep into the liner notes and you'll realize that the guitarist has been responsible for some of the band's finest moments of tender and droney uplift-- growers like "Neither of Us, Uncertainly" and "Like New". "Desire Lines", one of his songwriting contributions to Halcyon Digest, is his finest effort yet. It's the album's trippy centerpiece-- ascending from power chord chug to Tom Verlaine-worthy space-out over nearly seven minutes. "Walking free/ Come with me/ Far away, everyday," he sings, punctuating each line with a gentle "whoa-oh." This is Pundt's first truly up-front moment as a vocalist in Deerhunter and his subdued, casual delivery slots perfectly into the album's flow.

As a songwriter, Pundt has a gift for sneaking into epic territory through the back door-- delivering a big, guitar-driven payoff without condescending to cheesesball bombast. Cox may have the noisier songs, and personality, but on "Desire Lines" Pundt proves that he's more than just a deep cuts guy. --Aaron Leitko

10. Janelle Monáe [ft. Big Boi]

"Tightrope"

[Bad Boy]

Emotional extremes-- elation, heartbreak, fury, romantic obsession-- are pop's bread and butter; they're inherently dramatic and totally relatable. So it's a curiosity and event when a great pop song comes along about... equanimity. With the moral authority of a Sunday School teacher and showmanship of a Cirque du Soleil ringleader, Monáe rails against high highs and low lows-- specifically, against letting either sycophantic praise or jealous disses go to your head. That's good advice for target-hoisting famous folks like Monáe who get a lot of both, but what about the rest of us?

Everything from "Tightrope"'s taut body-popping funk beats to its note-perfect brass sallies to Big Boi's well-cued entrance make Monáe seem preternaturally confident, in-control, even unapproachable. But consider: In every orchestrated wire walk is the ever-present danger of taking one wrong step. And that's why we're down on the ground, holding our collective breath that she won't. --Amy Granzin

09. Arcade Fire

"Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"

[Merge]

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Disco and Arcade Fire have a lot in common: both rely on building and releasing communal sentiments for their full effect, and both create that effect through rhythm. Of course, disco's rhythm is based on an ultra-tight streamlined groove, and Arcade Fire's is more often a rolling, ragged surge. So on "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"-- where the two musics triumphantly fuse-- a lot of the appeal comes from the way the band get disco enthusiastically wrong. Take the way the piano comes bouncing and hammering in on the break-- a messy, earthy contrast to the twinkling synths we've already heard, and a highlight of the song.

"Sprawl II" evokes a precise era in dance-pop-- the bass and keyboards are "Heart of Glass"-era Blondie, and Régine Chassagne's breathy, accented singing reminds me of Eurodisco vocalists. This late-70s moment is when disco crossed over, becoming a suburban as much as an urban phenomenon. Perhaps more than any other track on The Suburbs, "Sprawl II" is true to the group's claim that the record is neither for or against the suburbs, but simply from them. The song's imagery-- memories of teen defiance set against visions of abandoned malls-- seems in unequivocal opposition to suburban life. But by setting it to this ersatz disco, music summoned out of the suburban heyday, the band let us know that, even in the sprawl, culture and life can flourish. It's not just the band's catchiest song, it's one of their most hopeful. --Tom Ewing

08. James Blake

"I Only Know (What I Know Now)"

[R&S]

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Quite a few artists this year worked with the embers of dubstep and chopped up vocals to create something we dubbed "the new vocabulary." But none were as successful as 22-year-old Londoner James Blake, whose trio of 2010 EPs gradually peeled back layers to reveal a bit more of his own vocals. His marquee songs all worked the same way: "The Bells Sketch" featured nearly wordless vocalizations; "CMYK" incorporated spectral samples of Aaliyah and Kelis; and by the time of his Feist cover "Limit to Your Love"-- a preview of his 2011 self-titled album-- his own fragile voice was front and center. "I Only Know (What I Know Now)" is the midpoint between the two, and his career highlight to date; it's the place where the ghost in the machine peeks out through the cracks and lets some light in.

Pitchfork's Tom Ewing once said the KLF's Chill Out was the sound of music having dreams about music. On "I Only Know" it sounds as if Blake is recording dreams of his own work. That's a trick that could slot him in with the half-remembered nostalgia crowd, but he trumps Bandcampers with this song's elegance, compositional prowess, and above all, his willingness to feel something and spotlight those emotions. More than any artist this year, Blake felt like both today and tomorrow; he clearly captures something in the air via Burial and other contemporaries, but takes that something somewhere brave and new at each turn. --Scott Plagenhoef

07. Joanna Newsom

"Good Intentions Paving Company"

[Drag City]

A few days after Have One on Me came out, I walked into a store where this song was playing on the radio, and thought, in order: 1) Huh, they don't usually play the classic rock station here; 2) Anyway, I love this song!; 3) Whoa, wait a minute.

A seven-minute suite that seems as compact as an AM-radio single, "Good Intentions Paving Company" might be the first Joanna Newsom song that demands the context of other folks' music rather than its own gallery space. (And Newsom really is "in love with the hook," which is a neat trick for a song without a refrain.) It's a road song about a couple who are literally on the road and figuratively on the road to hell. Like Zep sang, sometimes Newsom's words have two meanings, and this lyric pivots around the way they shift: "honey," "open," "right," "spell," "range." Her lacy, shimmering voice was once a vehicle of eccentric character; here, it's a traveling companion, giving her tricky diction some emotional spin. (Joni Mitchell is one obvious point of reference here, but so is Randy Newman.) At any moment, the focus of the song is the heart on Newsom's sleeve, so you need to pull back from it to catch the spectacular architecture of its melody-- the first bridge ("honey, just open your heart") is where the song flies off the interstate beat her piano's been pacing out, and into the open air. Also: trombone solo. --Douglas Wolk

06. Kanye West [ft. Dwele]

"POWER"

[Def Jam / Roc-A-Fella]

After the Taylor Swift Incident, Kanye West apologized and suggested he would work on becoming a humbler, more even-keeled person. @kanyewest: LOL. "POWER", the first salvo of what would soon become his year, is an absolutely breathtaking piece of egotism, even for a genre that's fueled by bravado and narcissism. Aptly self-described as superhero theme music, the track establishes a power-clap beat as heavy as Ye's Horus medallion before gliding through a high-speed tour of his musical evolution (the militant chants of "Jesus Walks", the moody piano and strings of 808s & Heartbreak). But it's a multi-part suite that loses none of its menace in its complexity, and a look back that sounds entirely forward-thinking.

If those aren't enough contradictions for you, the only thing as powerful as Kanye's sense of self-worth is his self-doubt-- the chorus is simultaneously boastful, condemning, and anxious. It's this endless competition that makes him so fascinating both on-stage and off, and "POWER" might as well be the theme music for that psychological warfare as well. Whether self-diagnosing himself through King Crimson samples or indulging a suicide fantasy in the song's final segment, "POWER" darts from manic to depressive and back again as quickly as its distorted MPC sample pings around your headphones. It's all of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy's pathology and genius in digest form, the vicarious, timeless thrill of hearing a crazy talented person act crazy and talented. --Rob Mitchum

05. Big Boi [ft. Cutty]

"Shutterbugg"

[Def Jam]

Like all of Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, "Shutterbugg" was dragged through years of major-label rap development hell before it reached our ears. But it appeared this year bearing no timestamp: That stuttering, quicksilver beat, a perpetual-motion machine of sparkling guitars, electro synths, and gastric talk-box burps, could have been birthed in 1979, 1999, or 2022.

The fact that it was somehow partly the product of Scott Storch-- he of the dependably lifeless, funk-free Dr. Dre imitations-- only deepens the song's mystery. Maybe it's the strange alchemy of working with someone as rhythmically and musically alive as Big Boi-- there are an infinite number of potential rhythmic detours in a beat this rich, and Big Boi burrows his way through nearly all of them. Like the album it leaps off of, "Shutterbugg" is a joyous demonstration of the triumph of funk over release dates. --Jayson Greene

04. Robyn

"Dancing on My Own"

[Konichiwa / Cherrytree / Interscope]

How do you know when a new pop song is a stone instant classic? If it gives you chills whenever you hear it? If it mixes perfectly into basically any other song? When every straight guy you know confesses that he secretly loves and listens to it? If it interpolates the themes and sounds of every great disco torch song ever and updates them without being winky or retro, but keeps the "Funky Town" woodblock percussion? If it contains a couplet as perfect as, "Stilettos and broken bottles/ I'm spinning around in circles"? Or if, when the chorus comes on in the club, it always feels like the very first time?

Robyn gave us all kinds of great singles this year, but "Dancing on My Own", which kicked off her Body Talk trilogy, remains the standout. Defying expectations and categorizations at every turn, she continues to demonstrate that she is the Rocky Balboa of pop music. Summoning the eternal spirits of divas like Donna Summer, Sylvester, and Gloria Gaynor, Robyn alchemizes everything great about current dance music into flawless ABBA gold. --Molly Lambert

03. LCD Soundsystem

"I Can Change"

[DFA]

Musically, "I Can Change" finds LCD Soundsystem diving wholeheartedly into early-80s synthpop. With its nagging and simplistic keyboard melody, its dry electronic percussion, and its grid of interlocking pieces, the entire backing track could've come off a Soft Cell or early Depeche Mode record. James Murphy is old enough to remember how that stuff worked and smart enough to figure out why it worked and how it could work again. And while most of his 2010 peers would use these elements for giggly, ironic nostalgia, Murphy knows exactly how perfect a vehicle this music is for delivering complex emotion.

On "I Can Change", a wounded and broken-down Murphy, desperately hoping to save a relationship, makes the one promise that nobody can ever deliver on: He could become a completely different person if that can make him the person his partner wants. It's a doomed plea, but Murphy makes it over and over: "I can change, I can change, I can change, if it helps you fall in looove." It's a familiar scene to anyone who's fought hard to save a relationship that probably wasn't worth saving, and Murphy delivers it simply and without effect. The twinkling beat pulses obliviously behind him, leaving him naked and vulnerable. --Tom Breihan

02. Kanye West [ft. Pusha T]

"Runaway"

[Def Jam / Roc-A-Fella]

Of all the arresting moments on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-- Nicki Minaj mauling the competition on "Monster", the King Crimson call-and-response of "POWER"-- none is more striking than that instant when the head-spinning, hallucinatory soul of "Devil in a New Dress" dissolves into the sobering piano-tapped intro to "Runaway". It's the sound of Kanye's entire over-Tweeted, Lanvin-lavished, Dubya-dissing universe reduced to one single, lonely chord.

On an album situated perilously on the faultline between ego and insecurity, "Runaway" puts Kanye's contradictory impulses on full display like they're some immaculate museum exhibit. At nine minutes, it is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy's longest song, but also its simplest and most emotionally direct. It's a sensitive piano ballad inspired by a moment of dick-pic exhibitionism. It's a chronicle of post-breakup depression and regret that, by the time we hit that ubiquitous chorus, has been reframed as a celebration-- and the more Kanye venerates his most loathsome qualities, the more humble and sympathetic a character he becomes. As his recent Tweet-athons about Matt Lauer and Taylor Swift suggest, Kanye tends to get defensive when his dubious behavior is called into question. "Runaway" marks the rare moment where Kanye sides with his detractors-- if the whole world thinks he's a douchebag, well, this one time he's inclined to agree. --Stuart Berman

01. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

"Round and Round"

[4AD]

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Thinking about "Round and Round" in this slot, I can't help but compare it to the song we had here last year, Animal Collective's "My Girls". The connection between them starts with the fact that Ariel Pink first came to public consciousness with the releases of The Doldrums on A.C.'s Paw Tracks label in 2004. Musically, that's also pretty much where the connection ends, despite the two artists sometimes sharing the "hazy, half-remembered yada yada" that became an indie cliché over the past two years. But I keep thinking of "My Girls" when listening to "Round and Round" because the musical differences couldn't be starker. Panda Bear wrote a simple verse and chorus and alternated between the two with a rhythm that felt right, jumping back and forth until it seemed time to stop and then the song faded out. "My Girls" was naïve and straightforward and full of heart and people played it at weddings with a straight face and that didn't even seem that weird.

"Round and Round", on the other hand, has an intro, a variation, a funny little break with a sound effect, a section that pauses just before the big refrain, and then that huge chorus, where every musical element (and every listener) is embraced by the song's skinny arms. In addition to all those pieces, it's also got requisite "vibe" and atmosphere. Where "My Girls" felt sincere, "Round and Round" is knowing and self-conscious, commenting on itself as a song as it unfolds. That bass/vibes line goes round and round, there are lyrics about air guitar and a frontman, and Ariel Pink whispers "breakdown" during a breakdown. This is music that gets over on its astonishing level of craftsmanship, which is something no casual Ariel Pink fan accustomed to his blown-out home recorded lo-fi output over the last decade would have expected from him in a million years. In 2010, Ariel Pink was the strange kid who fucked around all semester and developed a reputation as a hopeless loser who then proceeded to blow everyone's minds at the talent show. And in the end, "Round and Round" succeeds brilliantly for the same reason great Burt Bacharach songs work-- because every chord change and turnaround and melodic leap is in exactly the right place. "We'll dazzle them all," goes one line, and it's no idle boast; another goes, "Write the songs that say, 'I like that!'." Done and done. --Mark Richardson