Triumph of the Veridical - The Top 100 Songs of 2019

Okay, enough with the politics already and sitting around all day watching congressional testimony. It might be too soon, but this has been a great year for music and I can already easily select 100 songs for a Best Of list.  Besides, all of the music web sites and zines already have their best of 2019 lists out, as if there weren't another six or so weeks left to the year for more music to be released. 

A note on format: for the first time, I'm posting a link here to Spotify.  It doesn't seem practical to post 100 separate YouTube videos or Bandcamp gadgets here, and I see no other way that's practical and (bonus points) also not a copyright infringement.  If you don't have Spotify, then download the program - there's a free version if you don't mind some ad spots popping up in your playlist, and besides it's almost 2020.  Like it or not, streaming is here to stay.  The list above will play some short, lo-fi snippets of the songs if you don't have Spotify, but you really need the app to play it properly and understand why the songs included here are on this list.

Also, posting in this format allows me to not have to rank the songs in any numerical order.  Sharon Van Etten's Seventeen might be my No. 1 song of the year, but can I really say that it's better than Angel Olsen's All Mirrors?  And if I'm in the mood to dance, is there a better song than Toro y Moi's Ordinary Pleasure?  And then there are times when Kishi Bashi's Summer of '42 sounds absolutely perfect to me - not a note can be changed to improve it - and while it's objectively a better composition than Vampire Weekend's Harmony Hall, subjectively, there are times when I want to hear the latter more than the former.  But on other days, the sheer urgency and power of Idles' I Dream Guillotine seems to render everything else dainty and frivolous, while other times the narcotic lunacy of Underworld's Hundred Weight Hammer is the only song that feels right.

I've been working on this list for a long-ass time, since September at least, and while I can rank a handful as the "best of the best," I can't rank them in any definitive order.  The list is culled down from at least 1,000 songs that I've downloaded or streamed during the year, and while I'm sure that it doesn't look or sound like anybody else's Top 100 list (no Billie Eilish or Lil Nas X, f'rinstance), these are the songs that stuck in my head, the songs that I played and replayed over and over, in 2019. These are the songs that triggered my veridical processing system into releasing endorphins to my brain this year.

I'll let you decide if I like the songs or if I like the endorphins, or if that makes any difference, or if both basically mean the same thing.

Either way, as a result, I can't say that these are necessarily the 100 best-produced songs, or the absolute epitome of musicianship over the past year.  This isn't an audiophile's list and it most certainly isn't any sort of best-seller list.  These are the songs that were rattling around my head at 3:00 a.m. when I was trying to sleep, the songs I was singing to myself when I was supposed to be paying attention to something else or listening to someone who was talking to me.  

To be sure, there is much great musicianship on this list, many meticulously produced songs (Lady Lamb's Even In The Tremor and Nick Cave's Spinning Song) and some absolutely great songwriting (Destroyer's Crimson Tide and Big Thief's Not).  Other songs made the list simply because they had some great hook somewhere in there (Hælos' End of World Party and The Juan Maclean's Get Down), which doesn't make them any less than the other songs - a killer hook is just as legitimate as meaningful lyrics or virtuoso instrumentation.  What I'm trying to say is there's something in every one of these songs that made me want to listen to them again, and then again, and so on and so forth throughout the year.

Special mention in this earworm category goes to Rudy Willingham's Pool Party.  I doubt this song made anyone else's Best Of list and I don't even know what the hell this song is (hip hop? funk? novelty? children's music?), except that for some reason it makes me irrationally happy and I seem to be biologically incapable of not clicking on it every time I see it on this or any other playlist.

I limited the list to include no more than one song by each artist, but had to break my own rule for Purple Mountains (David Berman).  Ten years after disbanding his previous group (The Silver Jews) and not recording anything, he returned to music with an outstanding eponymous album last July, full of lyrics that were simultaneously among the wittiest and the most heartbreaking of the year. Tragically, just before he was about to go on tour with his new music, Berman took his own life.  I'm only just now processing the loss and realizing that the sadness and lonelinesss he sings about in his songs weren't just lyrics to him. I could probably include at least a half dozen songs from Purple Mountains on this list but couldn't contain myself to just one, and after much consideration selected two (Darkness and Cold and Storyline Fever) for this list. Please take a moment to pour one out on the ground for Mr. Berman.  He will be missed.         

I'm fairly proud of the diversity on this list, which in addition to the usual indie rock includes some country (Jack Klatt, Leslie Stevens, Lola Kirke), some power pop (The Rallies and Dan Luke),  some synth pop (Metronomy, Operators, Lower Dens and YACHT) some post-punk (Gauche and Squid), and even goth (Final Body).  The list also includes some hip hop, both old-school (DJ Shadow's Rocket Fuel, which I wish I could somehow make into my official theme song that would play as I entered every room), contemporary (Sampa the Great), and cutting-edge (clipping.). There's even a reggae song in there (Dance In the Sunshine by Hollie Cook).

Animal Collective, who usually can be counted on to make this list, didn't release any new music in 2019, but the collective's Panda Bear is well represented here by his song Dolphin.

80-year-old Mavis Staples (who still sounds as vital as ever) made the list with the blues-rocking civil rights anthem Change.  Hannah Williams is here with the R&B feminist anthem 50-Foot Woman. There's even two gay anthems here, Sufjan Stevens' Love Yourself and Claud's Wish You Were Gay.  

Mythology:  Both Sisyphus (Andrew Bird) and Orpheus (Shawn James) somehow made the list.   

Two songs made the list due to the way they both morph into something else midway through.  Jay Som's Superbike is a great song with a super-catchy guitar hook and probably would have made the list on its own, but somewhere around the 2:45 mark she unfurls a soaring, uplifting guitar solo which elevates the entire song and releases a flood of endorphins in my brain.  Seattle's Great Grandpa does much the same thing but in a different way with Bloom - the song starts as a sort of folk-rock number name-dropping Tom Petty and builds up into a solid rocker before chilling out halfway through and resolving itself with some gorgeous cooing vocals and strings. 

Latinx music is fairly well represented here (Cimafunk, Cineplexx, Lila Downs, Nortec Collective, Y La Bamba, and more). Helado Negro's Pais Nublado is one of my favorite songs of the year, certainly ranking among that  handful of "best of the best," and, like Pool Party but for very different reasons, makes me feel irrationally happy.

Contemporary classical music is represented by The National's Bryce Dessner with the French piano duo of Katia and Marielle Labèque (Haven).  Pan-African world music is represented by Ghanaian xylophone master Isaac Birituro (I Know). 

If you like it louder and harder, Chicago post-metal band Russian Circles made the list with Arluck, and we have two nearly 11-minute songs that might interest you: Frost by the great drone-metal band Sunn O)))) and The Hanging Man by Swans.  And if 11 minutes is still too short for you, the list includes the 21-minute psychedelic rock freak-out Henchlock by Thee Oh Sees.

If you like it quieter and softer, there's no shortage of acoustic singer-songwriters here, including Jessica Pratt (Poly Blue), Julia Jacklin (Body), and VanWyck (Carolina's Anatomy). If it's chill-out lounge music you're after, check out 10,000 Days by Keifer, or Dame Love by Girl Ultra, or Space Is the Place, a Sun Ra cover by Ezra Collective.

I could go on and try to name-drop all 99 artists on the list but you get the idea.  I hope you enjoy the music (I hope you give it a listen) as much as I've enjoyed pulling this list together.  I hope you enjoy  these great songs as much as I did listening to them throughout 2019.