The song at #62 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is the hauntingly beautiful “Trampoline” by indie dream-pop band SHAED. The band consists of lead vocalist Chelsea Lee and multi-instrumentalist twin brothers Max and Spencer Ernst (Chelsea and Spencer are married to each other). Their inspiration for “Trampoline” came one night as the trio sat together watching old family videos of Spencer and Max jumping on a trampoline as small children. The song’s meaning has been the subject of debate, ranging from death to suicide to drug addiction, but SHAED has stated that they simply wanted to write a great song loosely based on the idea of the Stranger Things alternative dimension “Upside Down” (Genius.com). This is artfully captured in the stunning and rather surreal video for the song.

A breakout hit for the Washington, D.C.-based threesome, “Trampoline” was originally released in May 2018, but got little airplay until it was featured in an Apple MacBook Air commercial that October, and the song quickly took off. The song finally debuted on the Billboard Alternative Chart in early December 2018, reaching #1 in the summer of 2019 and and spending 63 weeks on the chart. It also peaked at #13 on the Hot 100, and was named the #1 song of 2019 on the Alternative chart, and finished at #5 on my own year-end list for 2019.