Top 10 Songs of 2019 - No 10, Mavis Staples

Sure, why not?  Top 10 lists don't mean a thing - you like what you like and you dislike what you don't, regardless of how others rank things.  But these lists get generated anyway, and we here at the Music Desk aren't about to be left out.  We've already posted our playlist of the 100 best songs of 2019, but that list wasn't ranked in any particular order, so here's a highly idiosyncratic quick rundown of what we think were the 10 best songs of the year, or at least those that we listened to the most.

Last year, we weren't able to come up with even a full 10 songs to complete a "Best Of" list for the year, much less a playlist of 100 best songs.  In general, 2019 saw the continued drift of popular music away from rock and toward hip-hop, glamorous pop divas, and bland commercialism - other than hip-hop, the very things that punk rebelled against in the 1970s and that we had hoped the early-centennial indie renaissance would finally bring to an end.  

We're not optimistic about the future of music over the next couple of years, but like any year, there are little pockets and oases of good music if you know where to look (or if you kept searching hard enough).  And what was good in 2019 turned out to be, in fact, very good indeed, improbably making 2019 a very good year for music, arguably the best since 2015.

Musically, 2019 was, among other things, The Year of the Woman, and 80-year-old Mavis Staples (who still sounds as vital as ever) starts off our list with the No. 10 song, the blues-rocking anthem, Change.   Mavis, Pops and the rest of the family were recording socially-conscious music as The Staples Singers since at least the early 70s, and it's so cool to see Mavis still preaching truth these many decades later.  With any luck, in a decade or so, this youngster might even grow into a fully mature performer, like the 95-year-old Marshall Allen.

Runner-Up/For Your Consideration: Old-school music as reinterpreted by a younger generation - Hannah Williams & The Affirmations with the R&B feminist anthem, 50-Foot Woman (you may recognize the song from an Infiniti car commercial). Hannah isn't 80 years old and she isn't the gray punk riot grrl in her video (she's actually the pink-haired on-looker), but the music and the accompanying video do make a good visual and musical companion to Mavis Staples' song.