Category: Favorite Songs

100 Best Songs of the 2010s – #37: “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train

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The song at #37 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is “Hey, Soul Sister” by California pop-rock band Train. From their fifth studio album Save Me, San Francisco, the song is a sweet and joyous celebration of lust and love. Technically, the song is from the previous decade, as it was released in August 2009, but didn’t peak on most charts until early 2010, so qualifies for inclusion on my best songs of the 2010s list. It’s the best-selling single of Train’s career, and also highest-charting, reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #1 on the Adult Top 40 and Contemporary charts. It was named the #1 song of 2010 on the Adult Top 40 chart and #3 on the Hot 100. It also reached #1 in Australia, Hungary, Ireland and the Netherlands.

Band front man Pat Monahan teamed up with New York-based Norwegian songwriting and music production duo Espionage (consisting of Espen Lind and Amund Bjørklund, who wrote Beyoncé’s smash hit “Irreplaceable”, among others) to write “Hey, Soul Sister”.  Monahan told them he wanted the song to have an INXS vibe, and after they wrote the melody, he wrote the lyrics and started to sing the song, but wasn’t pleased with what they’d come up with. He later recalled: “Espen, who’s like a huge star in Norway, picked up a ukelele and said, ‘Hey, how about this?’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And it made the difference. It made my words dance. It made sense. These words were meant to dance with ukulele and not guitar.” (Wikipedia)

The heartwarming lyrics speak of being besotted with a woman and singing her praises, and are nicely delivered by Monahan with an endearing fervor guaranteed to bring a smile to even the dourest face. “Hey soul sister, ain’t that Mr. Mister on the radio, stereo. The way you move ain’t fair you know. Hey soul sister, I don’t wanna miss a single thing you do tonight.” The charming video was filmed in front of Chango Coffee in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

100 Best Songs of the 2010s – #38: “Can’t Hold Us” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Ray Dalton

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The song at #38 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is “Can’t Hold Us” by Seattle hip hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, featuring guest vocals by R&B singer Ray Dalton. On the heels of their worldwide smash hit “Thrift Shop” (which ranks at #89 on this list), the charismatic duo hit the jackpot again with “Can’t Hold Us”, although it took a while for the song to catch hold. The single was actually first released in August 2011, a full year before “Thrift Shop” (which instantly became their first big hit) but didn’t gain much traction or airplay until after the release of “Thrift Shop” and their debut album The Heist more than a year later. The song finally entered the Billboard Hot 100 in early 2013, and reached #1 that May.

“Can’t Hold Us” is a wonderful feel-good anthem of hope and perseverance that’s so joyously upbeat that I can’t help but get swept up in it’s euphoric celebratory vibe, wanting to jump up and down with glee! Macklemore freestyles the lyrics about overcoming naysayers and fighting onward in the pursuit of his dreams with a flow that’s truly impressive: “Chasing dreams since I was fourteen with the four-track, bussing halfway cross that city with the backpack / Fat cat, crushing labels out here, nah, they can’t tell me nothing. / We give that to the people, spread it across the country.” Dalton sings the hook “Can we go back, this is the moment / Tonight is the night, we’ll fight ’til it’s over /So we put our hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us / Like the ceiling can’t hold us.”

Musically, the song features an exuberant array of instruments, including a fantastic piano line, horns, strings, tambourine, guitar and drums, all accompanied by bold handclapping, foot stomping, and a soaring gospel-like chorus that make for a truly uplifting and electrifying track. The video produced for the song is a mini saga, filmed in several locations around the globe.

And here’s a terrific live performance in November 2011 of the song at their legendary hometown radio station KEXP. I almost prefer this, as it allows us to more fully appreciate the song’s greatness, as well as Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ joyful energy.

100 Best Songs of the 2010s – #39: “The Man” by The Killers

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The song at #39 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is the deliciously bombastic “The Man” by The Killers. I’m a huge fan of The Killers, and have loved or at least liked every song I’ve ever heard from them. Released in June 2017, “The Man” was the lead single from their fifth studio album Wonderful, Wonderful. The song received mostly positive reviews from critics, and I think it’s terrific; it spent five weeks at #1 on my own personal Weekly Top 30 chart. I love how the music revs up at the beginning, then explodes into a pounding dance beat courtesy of Ronnie Vannucci’s power drums. Throw in a sturdy bass line, sweeping synths and band front man Brandon Flowers’ soaring tenor vocals, and you’ve got a fun, exhilarating tune. I also love when Flowers pays homage to David Bowie late in the song when he shouts “headed for the hall of…FAME!”

Vannucci has stated that the song is basically about how a lot of men feel invincible when they’re younger: “Sort of your chest out, the breadwinner, nothing could stop you… It’s tongue-and-cheeking that, how that is not really the point of being a man at all. It’s actually more about compassion and empathy.” The fantastically entertaining video, filmed in and around the band’s hometown of Las Vegas, shows Flowers playing several different arrogant characters who are full of themselves, all thinking they’re ‘the man’.

100 Best Songs of the 2010s – #40: “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga

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From a bad guy to a bad romance, the business of love can be a treacherous minefield. The song at #40 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. At the dawn of the 2010s, Lady Gaga (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) was already an international star, thanks to the success of her debut album The Fame, which launched her career like a shot from a cannon. Two singles from the album – “Just Dance” and “Poker Face” were both huge worldwide hits, topping the charts in the U.S. and many countries.

In late 2009, she followed up with Fame Monster, released as both a stand-alone EP and as a deluxe reissue of The Fame, which included two discs, one consisting of the eight new tracks, and the other consisting of the original tracks from The Fame. One of the new tracks was “Bad Romance”, which I think is her best song ever. The unusual melody and song structure are interesting and fairly complex, featuring elements of German-esque house and techno that Gaga described as being experimental pop. But whatever it’s called, it’s absolutely brilliant and gloriously cinematic, with a larger-than-life quality befitting her own persona.

The lyrics address aspects of a bad relationship and her poor choice in men, specifically, of being attracted to men with whom romance never works, and falling in love with your best friend. In an MTV interview, she stated that in the verse, “I want your psycho, your vertigo shtick, Want you in my rear window, baby, you’re sick“, she used Alfred Hitchcock film titles to express that she wanted “the deepest, darkest, sickest parts of you that you are afraid to share with anyone because I love you that much.”

The stylish and surreal video for “Bad Romance” has garnered nearly 1.3 billion views.

100 Best Songs of the 2010s – #41: “This is America” by Childish Gambino

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The song at #41 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is “This is America” by Childish Gambino, the artistic name for the music project of the multi-faceted and incredibly talented actor, writer, director, producer, singer-songwriter and rapper Donald Glover. One of the best songs of 2018, “This is America” features an alternating mix of African-folk inspired melodies and pulsating hip hop-driven trap beats, paired with highly provocative lyrics addressing issues of racism, police brutality and gun violence in America. It features background vocals by rappers Young Thug (who also co-wrote the song with Glover and Swedish songwriter-producer Ludwig Göransson), Slim Jxmmi, BlocBoy, JB, Quavo (of the group Migos), and 21 Savage. The song debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on May 5, 2018, and also topped the charts in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In February 2019, the song won Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rap/Sung Performance, and Best Music Video.

The companion video for the song, directed by Hiro Murai, drives home the lyrics’ message with shocking and often disturbing visual imagery. Released on YouTube simultaneously with Gambino’s performance of the song on Saturday Night Live on May 5, 2018, the video quickly went viral, garnering 12.9 million views in the first 24 hours. As I write this, it’s been viewed over 736 million times.

Things start off pleasantly enough, with Glover/Gambino dancing about shirtless, but using grotesque smiles and exaggerated poses that some believe invoke the racist caricature Jim Crow. He sings “We just wanna party. Party just for you. We just want the money“, possibly referencing Black peoples’ historic role as entertainers for White people. Events take a violent turn when he walks up to a man who’s sitting on a chair playing guitar with his head covered by a hood, and shoots him in the head. A little later, he nonchalantly mows down a choir of singers with an automatic weapon. In both cases, he hands the guns over to someone holding a red cloth, giving the impression that the guns are being handled with greater care than the people he’s killed. The shooting of the choir is thought to represent the 2015 massacre at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Glover/Gambino and a group of kids clad in school uniforms dance throughout much of the video, smiling as violence erupts around them. At the end of the video, he’s shown running for his life from an angry white mob.

100 Best Songs of the 2010s – #42: “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons

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The song at #42 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is “Radioactive” by Las Vegas-based pop-rock band Imagine Dragons. Since the release of their breakout single “It’s Time” in 2012, Imagine Dragons has become one of the biggest and most successful music acts in the world, selling over 35 million singles in the U.S. and 20 million albums worldwide (RIAA). Unfortunately, as it happens with a number of bands who’ve become hugely popular, there’s also been a bit of a backlash, with a sizable number of people hating them as well. I like them a lot, though I’ll admit many of their songs have been overplayed to the point where they got to be annoying.

“Radioactive” was their second single, and was included on their EP Continued Silence and later on their debut album Night Visions. It’s a bombastic alternative electronic rock song with booming dubstep beats, loads of distortion, and dramatic soaring choruses that make for an intense and exciting listen. The dark lyrics reference apocalyptic and revolutionist themes, though band front man Dan Reynolds told Rolling Stone that it’s “basically about my struggle with anxiety and depression. It’s about becoming self-empowered and rising above that. I wanted to write a masculine and primal song about conjuring and rising above human weakness.”

The song has sold over 10 million digital copies, and peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #1 on the Alternative, Hot Rock and Rock Airplay charts.

The official video produced for the song was directed by Syndrome and features actors Lou Diamond Phillips, who plays the ringleader of an underground puppet-fighting ring, and Alexandra Daddario, who plays a mysterious female drifter on a quest to save her friends in Imagine Dragons from Phillips. The video shows a series of fights between puppets, and just seems rather silly and childish to me, taking away from the overall power of the song. But in an interview with MTV, Reynolds explained that they wanted a more lighthearted approach in the video: “We read through a ton of scripts from really talented directors, and we came across one that stood out to us in particular, because it put into visuals the general theme of the song, which is kind of an empowering song about an awakening, but it did it in a way that was very different. A lot of people probably see a post-apocalyptic world when they hear ‘Radioactive’, understandably, but we wanted to deliver something that was maybe a little different from that … a lot different from that.” As I write this, the official video has been viewed more than 1.2 billion times, with 7.6 million likes on YouTube.

Here’s an audio-only video for those who’d just like to hear the song:

100 Best Songs of the 2010s – #43: “Happy” by Pharrell Williams

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The song at #43 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. Despite its repetitive chorus and being played to death on the radio (which I still listened to a fair amount back in 2014), I never tired of hearing this irresistibly catchy earworm. Neither did millions of others, as “Happy” became a massive worldwide hit, reaching #1 in over 30 countries, including the U.S. It spent 10 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, where it was also named the #1 song of 2014.

A renowned and prolific singer, rapper, songwriter, record producer and fashion designer, Pharrell has had a successful career as a solo artist, as part of the record production duo The Neptunes (with Chad Hugo), lead singer of rock/hip hop band N.E.R.D., and a frequent collaborator with an astonishing array of artists. In late 2013, on the heels of his monster collaborative hits “Get Lucky” (with Daft Punk) and “Blurred Lines” (with Robin Thicke and T.I.), he released “Happy”, which was one of five tracks he wrote for the Despicable Me 2 film soundtrack. The song was originally intended to be sung by fellow singer/songwriter CeeLo Green, whose version Pharrell actually thought was better than his, however, CeeLo’s label Elektra Records decided against it, as he was about to release his Christmas album. So, Pharrell’s recording was used for the film soundtrack and released as a single instead, and the rest, as they say, is history. The song was also later included on his album G I R L.

To coincide with the single release, the website  24hoursofhappy.com was launched, featuring a 24-hour long video of “Happy” consisting of the song repeated multiple times, with footage of the charismatic Pharrell and an array of people, including celebrities and the Despicable Me minions, dancing and miming along to the song on streets and parks around Los Angeles. An equally delightful official four-minute long edited video was also released, and has been viewed over 1 billion times. The song was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song, but unfortunately lost to the inferior “Let it Go” from Frozen.

And for those who want to indulge, here’s the series of 24 hour-long videos:

100 Best Songs of the 2010s – #44: “Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish

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The song at #44 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is “Bad Guy” by the insanely talented young artist Billie Eilish (her full birth name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell). With the meteoric success of her ground-breaking debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, one of the biggest-selling albums of 2019, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter became a superstar. I was blown away by her phenomenal performance at the 2019 Coachella Music Festival (which I watched livestreamed on YouTube) when she was only 17 years old. “Bad Guy” reached #1 on numerous music charts in the U.S. and around the world, including Australia, Canada, Mexico, Greece, Hungary, Norway and the Czech Republic.

“Bad Guy” was co-written by Eilish and her older brother Finneas O’Connell (a successful artist in his own right), who also produced and programmed the track. Musically, the song has an unusual minimalist melody featuring instrumentation provided by synth bass, kick drum, finger snaps and 808 bass, pulling us headlong into a thumping, ominous soundscape. Eilish’s clipped, breathy vocals have a seductive, almost menacing quality as she sings the provocative lyrics that seem beyond her tender years, yet she makes them totally believable. “I’m that bad type. Make your mama sad type. Make your girlfriend mad tight. Might seduce your dad type. I’m the bad guy, duh.” It’s brilliant!

Given her talent, creativity, intelligence and willingness to experiment, I’m confident that Billie Eilish is destined for a long and illustrious career.

100 Best Songs of the 2010s – #45: “Pompeii” by Bastille

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The song at #45 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is “Pompeii” by British alternative pop-rock band Bastille. Originally started in Leeds in 2010 as a solo project of singer-songwriter Dan Smith – who named his project after the French holiday that’s celebrated on his birthday of July 14 – Bastille later grew into a four-piece. In 2011, they released their debut EP Laura Palmer, featuring songs Dan had previously written. That December, they signed with Virgin Records, and began recording and releasing a series of singles that would become part of their debut album Bad Blood, which dropped in March 2013. One of those singles, “Pompeii”, would catapult Bastille to international fame. It reached #1 in Scotland and Ireland, and #2 in the UK, Italy and Mexico. In the U.S., it peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #1 on the Alternative, Adult Alternative and Rock Airplay charts.

Smith wrote the song in 2010 while still a student, after reading about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. It made him think about all those who perished being forever frozen in time. He later told The Daily Telegraph that he imagined what those dead inhabitants might have to say to one another, and explained the song’s meaning “It is essentially about fear of stasis and boredom. Being quite a shy, self-conscious person, I was afraid my life might get stuck.” “Pompeii” is darkly beautiful, immediately grabbing our attention with its ominous opening chant of  “Eh, eheu, eheu…” (“eheu” is Latin for alas, which is an exclamation of grief, pain, or fear) that’s repeated throughout the track, ending as it started. It was one of the more unusual and haunting songs of the decade.

The fascinating and eerie video plays almost like a mini horror film, albeit not a terribly frightening one. Smith is shown frantically wandering about an empty-looking Los Angeles at night, discovering that the few people he encounters all have unnatural vacant black eyes that resemble the looks of the petrified remains of those who perished in Pompeii. He steals a car and flees to the desert to try and escape, but the car breaks down. The next morning, in a scene filmed next to the Whitewater River in north Palm Springs not far from where I live, he realizes he’s been infected too. In the final scene, he’s atop Mt. San Jacinto looking out at the view, then turns around to reveal his own eyes have turned black.

100 Best Songs of the 2010s – #46: “Mountain At My Gates” by Foals

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The song at #46 on my list of 100 Best Songs of the 2010s is the gorgeous anthem “Mountain At My Gates” by British alt-rock band Foals. They rank among my current favorite bands and I passionately love their distinctive sound, characterized by uniquely beautiful guitar work and lead singer Yannis Philippakis’ rich vocals that make their music instantly identifiable. The group was formed in Oxford, England in 2005, and their current line-up consists of the aforementioned Yannis Philippakis (I love that name!) who also plays lead guitar, drummer and percussionist Jack Bevan, rhythm guitarist Jimmy Smith and keyboardist Edwin Congreave. Their previous bassist Walter Gervers left the band in 2019 to pursue other interests.

From their stunning fourth album What Went Down, “Mountain At My Gates” was released as a single in July 2015. The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard Alternative chart in early 2016. The lyrics seem to address perseverance and overcoming life’s obstacles, although in a 2015 interview with NME, Philippakis said the lyrics just came to him spontaneously in the studio: “The central image – ‘I see a mountain at my gates’ was from me getting more interested in seeing what would come out lyrically where there wasn’t a pre-conceived idea. Normally I write voraciously in books and journals, then harvest a lot of that for the record. This, though, came out instantaneously in the room.”

I see a mountain at my gates
I see it more and more each day
And my desire wears a dark dress
But each day, I see you less

Oh, gimme some time
Show me the foothold from which I can climb
Yeah, when I feel low
You show me a signpost for where I should go

The dramatic and powerful instrumentals – highlighted by those beautiful guitars – are fantastic, and Philippakis’ fervent vocals smolder and soar to impassioned wails as the song builds to a climactic flourish, leaving me covered in chills every time I hear it.

The interesting video produced for the song is a spherical video filmed with a GoPro omnidirectional camera. You can rotate the imagery with your cursor.