Pop pop pop pop pop: It does not stop, even when your spirits drop. Sometimes it's pretty good, too! Sometimes it can comfort you in your sorrow and anger and confusion; sometimes it can lift those spirits right back up.
A magnificent pop song can jolt you back to life like nothing else, tapping into emotional and psychological realms only music can reach. As with any genre, there is a lot of unlistenable dreck on the radio and the charts, but they also contain songs that make you think, "Holy shit," and songs that bypass thinking altogether to elicit sheer physical elation. This can be true of any music, but pop is special in that it aims for that effect outright. It paints in broad strokes, and it aspires to be something bigger than one person's private moment or even the province of a tiny community (both noble aspirations in their own right -- please refer to Ecclesiastes and the Byrds for further comment).
Such an ambitious approach can yield monumental distractions and crass lowest-common-denominator debacles, but the drive to create something universal also feels vital at a time when unity is hard to come by and subtlety ain't doing nothing for nobody. And when it works, and music is transmuted into magic, we all get to share it.
This year, like every year, the best pop music soared to such heights. Much of it came from A-list stars working with massive teams of industry professionals; some of it was generated at home, by one person with some big ideas. A lot of the resulting tracks became ubiquitous; some of them merely should have been ubiquitous -- and given the way songs like OMI's "Cheerleader" and Kiiara's "Gold" have emerged from obscurity years later to become smash hits, maybe some of them still will be.
Pop's predominant currency is the hit single, so although an assessment of the year could take many forms, the most pleasurable is a playlist of jams -- a rundown of quality tracks that will endure in the cultural memory plus a few that would go down in history too in some superior timeline. The following is just such a list.
Before we proceed: What constitutes a pop song? It's a question I often consider when writing this column, assessing the constantly shifting imaginary borders of what passes for music's mainstream. When it came time to run down the medium's finest singles, per tradition, I had to draw some arbitrary lines. So: The focus here is strictly on songs aimed at top-40 radio and hits that performed well on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart. That means no country, no "alt-pop" or "indie pop" or whatever you want to call it, and no modern rock, though all three genres have crept their way into The Week In Pop's coverage this year. Consider this a yearbook for a monoculture, with an emphasis on pure sonic pleasure over all.
40. Little Mix - "Shout To My Ex"
Imagine Icona Pop's "I Love It" as reinterpreted by Fifth Harmony and you might conjure the exuberant spirit of this punchy kiss-off anthem.
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39. Sia - "Cheap Thrills" (Feat. Sean Paul)
Weirdly, "Cheap Thrills" surpassed "Chandelier" to become Sia's biggest hit ever, and wonderfully, it brought Sean Paul back to pop radio saturation for the first time in a decade. It's an internet cliché to describe quality singles as "a bop," but that's exactly what this song does. Whichever A-list artist turned it down made a big mistake.
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38. Nick Jonas - "Close" (Feat. Tove Lo)
This lurching, synthetic steel-drum groove features convincing performances by Jonas and Tove as two people inching tantalizingly close to release. And yes, the video elevates it to a completely different echelon.
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37. Charli XCX - "After The Afterparty" (Feat. Lil Yachty)
Here we have "We Can't Stop" and "Ignition (Remix)" and Charli's own contributions to "Fancy" and so many other after-hours anthems all rolled up into one music-box ditty, topped off with post-everything internet rap warbler Yachty affirming his true calling as a pop sideman.
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36. Tove Lo - "Cool Girl"
Icy Swedish pop precision and the plot of Gone Girl caught up together in a burbling synthetic slipstream.
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35. Ariana Grande - "Side To Side" (Feat. Nicki Minaj)
Watered-down dancehall was the sound of so many hits this year, but not many of them were as fun as Grande and Minaj's winking ode to sex so visceral you can barely walk.
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34. Machine Gun Kelly - "Bad Things" (Feat. Camila Cabelo)
Am I out of my head, am I out of my mind, or is the collision of an old, forgotten Fastball song, the biggest star in Fifth Harmony, and Cleveland's foremost white trash rapper-turned-actor actually a good thing? What can I say, it's complicated.
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33. Daya - "Sit Still, Look Pretty"
Bubbly feminist synthpop from the best Chainsmokers collaborator in the game.
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32. Lady Gaga - "Perfect Illusion"
I left a lot of hits off this list according to the logic that getting stuck in my head all the time does not necessarily make them great songs. Such was the fate of "Perfect Illusion" at one point, but every time I caught myself singing, "It wasn't la-a-ahve, it wasn't la-a-ahve," my heart found a little more room for Gaga's relentlessly pounding rock-disco rave-up. Also, "moccasin game is strong" is the best misheard lyric of 2016 bar none.
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31. The Chainsmokers - "Don't Let Me Down" (Feat. Daya)
Between "Roses," their best song, and "Closer," their biggest, the Chainsmokers gave us this weird convergence of xx guitars and faux-Rihanna vocals and vaguely Eastern EDM drops. It rightly ruled the summer.
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30. The Weeknd - "Starboy" (Feat. Daft Punk)
The Toronto of my imagination feels a lot colder when this is on.
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29. Desiigner - "Panda"
Kanye West grafted a wide-eyed 19-year-old Future impersonator's obscure SoundCloud loosie into his album, and that song ended up bigger than anything Kanye or Future released this year, mostly because there's some kind of mystical power in the way Desiigner strings together the words, "I got broads in Atlanta."
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28. Bridgit Mendler - "Atlantis" (Feat. Kaiydo)
A master class in post-Imogen Heap pop craftsmanship in which life underwater serves as both a metaphor and an aesthetic.
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27. DJ Snake - "Middle" (Feat. Bipolar Sunshine)
To think that the guy who gave us "Turn Down For What" is also responsible for this exercise in pulsating transcendent melancholy.
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26. DJ Snake - "Let Me Love You" (Feat. Justin Bieber)
Bieber gave away so many hits of this ilk to big-name producers this year that you can be sure his next album will sound nothing like Purpose.
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25. Zayn - "It's You"
Zayn's debut album was too drowsy, too self-consciously artsy, too reliant on atmosphere as a substitute for songcraft -- except on "It's You," a graceful ballad that seemed to float a few feet above the earth's surface. Thankfully he paused his Weeknd worship for a moment to breathe the spirit of Thom Yorke into an adult contemporary slow jam.
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24. Hailee Steinfeld & Grey - "Starving" (Feat. Zedd)
Just when I thought Steinfeld was getting over her fun but inessential musical side hustle and getting back to her prodigious acting career, she went and dropped a pristine, state-of-the-art, head-over-heels love song that feels suspiciously like the edge of 17.
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23. The 1975 - "The Sound"
The band name has always been a misnomer, but especially so on an exultant pop/rock/house/gospel track that collapses the '80s, '90s, and aughts into one big emotional party.
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22. Beyoncé - "Hold Up"
Beyoncé + Diplo + Ezra Koenig + Karen O + Father John Misty = a deceptively chill track about confronting your cheating husband.
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21. Ariana Grande - "Dangerous Woman"
20. Rihanna - "Kiss It Better"
Sultry sex slow jams with '80s electric guitar solos were back in a big way this year, thank God.
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19. Drake - "One Dance" (Feat. WizKid & Kyla)
Just when we thought he'd missed his shot at #1 when a chart technicality stonewalled "Hotline Bling," Drake bounced back with a breezy faux-dancehall delight that topped the chart for 10 weeks.
18. Bruno Mars - "Versace On The Floor"
Gloriously schmaltzy baby-making New Jack Swing from an artist whose homage expertise knows no bounds.
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17. The Chainsmokers - "Closer" (Feat. Halsey)
Did it deserve to become one of the 17 biggest songs in Billboard Hot 100 history? Nah. Was it one of the 17 best pop songs of this year? Sure.
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16. Maggie Rogers - "Alaska"
Thanks, Pharrell, for putting this one on our collective radar. And thanks, Ms. Rogers, for proving "Alaska" was more than a fluke.
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15. Fifth Harmony - "Work From Home" (Feat. Ty Dolla $ign)
What shit luck that "Work From Home" came out weeks after Rihanna released her own "work work work work work" anthem -- and what good fortune that radio programmers decided to play this one anyway. I'm also grateful that Ty Dolla $ign treated this track as more than a paycheck; the West Coast bounce that makes his own music so satisfying pleasingly courses through "Work From Home," too.
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14. Bruno Mars - "24K Magic"
Not sure "Put your pinky rings up to the moon!" is ever gonna catch on as a catchphrase, but for three minutes and 47 seconds, this song certainly makes me want to acquire and flaunt such a ring.
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13. Alicia Keys - "In Common"
Why this brisk, minimal, Jamie xx-indebted dancehall excursion wasn't included on Keys' new album is a mystery. It's her best single in years and one of the best of 2016.
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12. Rihanna - "Needed Me"
I love that DJ Mustard -- whose minimal, snapping West Coast ratchet music once took over Mike Will Made-It's vaunted place in the rap and R&B production hierarchy -- has now, upon that signature sound's near-total disappearance from pop music, delivered his own version of a Mike Will Made-It beat, and that it doesn't bang so much as heaves, and that Rihanna used it to finally achieve apotheosis for her no-fucks-given reputation.
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11. The Weeknd - "I Feel It Coming" (Feat. Daft Punk)
The Toronto of my imagination feels a lot warmer when this is on.
10. Ariana Grande - "Be Alright"
"Be Alright" hits like a breath of fresh air and glides like gravity can't hold it down, and its bridge is pop's best pillaging of playground nursery rhymes since "Country Grammar."
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9. Drake - "Too Good" (Feat. Rihanna)
8. Rihanna - "Work" (Feat. Drake)
Drake and Rihanna's romantic entanglements may or may not be a good idea, but please, let's keep getting them together for duets. To a flawless library that already included "What's My Name" and "Take Care" we can now add two more masterworks of wistful twilight R&B.
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7. The 1975 - "UGH!"
This song's sonic building blocks pop, drop, and lock with such a funky cyborg pizzazz that I am still perplexed about why half the world responds to the 1975 with a revulsion usually reserved for Maroon 5. If you can't appreciate "UGH!,"I don't even know what to say anymore except you have bad taste in music.
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6. Usher - "Crash"
I've passionately evangelized for "Crash" twice already, and I even included it on my personal list of the year's best songs. It is truly excellent, and it deserved to be as big as any Usher song has ever been.
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5. Beyoncé - "Formation"
I am not even qualified to unpack this song's many layers of majesty -- for such analysis, click here or here -- but anyone can behold them and be amazed.
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4. Rae Sremmurd - "Black Beatles" (Feat. Gucci Mane)
A real crowd-pleaser, and one that kept alive Rae Sremmurd's streak as zeitgeist-seizing hit-makers with a reach far beyond hip-hop's usual audience. If a doofy viral video challenge can elevate a song this good from critically acclaimed deep cut to five weeks at #1 (and counting), maybe doofy viral video challenges aren't so bad after all.
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3. Beyoncé - "Sorry"
Everything about this swaggering synthetic kiss-off is so awesomely memorable that it's hard to keep track of all the highlights. For instance, I almost forgot it features Beyoncé telling Jay Z to suck on her balls.
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2. D.R.A.M. - "Broccoli" (Feat. Lil Yachty)
The piano, the flute, the low-end keyboard detonations, the harmonious Auto-Tuned mumbling about protecting friends and spending a paycheck on Mom, the detailed anecdote about enjoying bagels with salmon and capers on a square plate, the unbound joy of being beyond all that fuck shit: It's all good.
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1. Ariana Grande - "Into You"
May Ariana Grande and Max Martin conspire to top this list every two years for the rest of time. In 2014 the young American entertainer and the veteran Swedish songwriter-producer joined forces on "Problem," a sassy saxophone throwback to a moment in pop history that had not been properly excavated by the nostalgists up until then. It was the best pop song of the year. Grande, Martin, and his team of pop professionals attempted to recapture their winning chemistry on 2015 single "Focus," which hit all the same beats as "Problem" with significantly diminished returns. So they gave up trying to make lightning strike twice and instead came up with something completely different, an aggressive synth-disco tidal wave that inspires a whole other range of physical reactions.
"Into You" rides like a million-dollar sports car, breathlessly accelerating around corners without smudging its pristine exterior. But it also feels entirely human in depicting an attraction that can barely be contained -- the kind that begs, "a little less conversation and a little more touch my body" (an aspiring queen of pop nodding to the King Of Rock 'N' Roll) -- and sells the tortured syntax with such conviction that it seems like the most natural thing a woman possessed by lust would ever utter. From the pulse-pounding intro to a chorus that hits like explosives rippling through subway tunnels, it is just a genius piece of music -- a joy and a thrill, the kind of song that makes you feel like a glamorous superhuman for four minutes at a time, every time.
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CHART WATCH
The Hamilton Mixtape, a compilation on which famous musicians reinterpret songs from the blockbuster Broadway musical Hamilton, debuts atop the Billboard 200 this week with 187,000 equivalent units and 169,000 in pure sales -- thereby out-charting the actual Hamilton soundtrack, which peaked at #3. Per Billboard, it's the best sales week for a comp since Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music moved 205,000 copies of Cruel Summer in 2012. The mixtape's arrival bumps the Weeknd and Pentatonix's most recent Christmas album down to #2 and #3 respectively.
Debuting at #4 are the Rolling Stones, tallying 123,000 copies of blues covers album Blue & Lonesome, their record-extending 37th top-10 album. Then comes Childish Gambino's Awaken, My Love! at #5 with 101,000 units (and 72,000 in sales), which marks a new chart high for Donald Glover's project and would be good enough for a #1 debut on many weeks. At 6-7-8 we have Bruno Mars, the Moana soundtrack, and yet another Pentatonix Christmas album. Two more debuts round out the top 10: 12-year-old America's Got Talent star Grace VanderWaal's Perfectly Imperfect EP at #9 with 52,000 units and country bro Kane Brown's self-titled debut album at #10 with 51,000.
Over on the Hot 100, Rae Sremmurd and Gucci Mane's "Black Beatles," one of my absolute favorites of the year, remains #1 for a fifth straight week. At 2-3-4-5-6 we have "Starboy," "Closer," "24K Magic," "Side To Side," and "Juju On That Beat." Maroon 5 and Kendrick Lamar's "Don't Wanna Know" reaches a new peak of #7. After #8 "Let Me Love You" and #9 "Heathens" comes a new top-10 entrant: Machine Gun Kelly and Camila Cabello's "Bad Things" rises from #17 to #10, becoming MGK's first top-1o hit and Fifth Harmony member Cabello's first as a solo artist. (Her Shawn Mendes duet "I Know What You Did Last Summer" topped out at #20.)
POP FIVE
Zayn & Taylor Swift - "I Don't Wanna Live Forever"
I like Zayn, and I like Swift, and I like Jack Antonoff, but "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" feels like the least momentous possible combination of their respective sensibilities. This didn't have to be a great song, it just needed to sound like an event, and it simply does not.
Pentatonix - "Coldest Winter" (Kanye West Cover)
The world's most popular a cappella group has a tradition of repurposing old hits into holiday fare because they sound wintry (Fleet Foxes' "White Winter Hymnal") or vaguely spiritual (Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"). They've done it again with Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreaks track "Coldest Winter," and -- goofy snowman music video aside -- it's not the unlistenable Christmas cornball I was expecting. I even kind of like it?
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Steve Aoki & Louis Tomlinson - "Just Hold On!"
Whereas Zayn aimed for a darkened adult-R&B realm between Sam Smith and the Weeknd and Niall Horan went full-fledged acoustic Ed Sheeran worship, Ex-One Direction member Tomlinson is launching his solo career with an electro-pop track by Steve Aoki. The studio version is not particularly memorable, but it's a lot slicker and more bearable than the duo's actively bad X Factor performance, for which poor Louis really should have lip synced.
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G-Eazy - "Vengeance On My Mind" (Feat. Dana)
On which the Bay Area's not-so-great white hope completes his journey to the absolute midpoint between Drake and Macklemore.
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Bastille - "Blame"
I don't know if these guys will ever have another hit like "Pompeii," the song that made them ubiquitous for a while. Instead, they exist somewhere in between Imagine Dragons and Alt-J in the realm of poppy alt-rock bands who get radio airplay but not critical love. If a new Bastille song were to pop off, though, it might be this one.
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NEWS IN BRIEF
- In an open letter, John Legend petitioned President Obama to pardon incarcerated non-violent drug offenders. [Rolling Stone]
- Drake gifted DJ Khaled and his newborn son diamond keys. [Instagram]
- Taylor Swift donated $100K to Dolly Parton's telethon to help Tennessee fire victims. [ET]
- Pharrell surprised NYC middle schoolers who were singing his songs from the Hidden Figures soundtrack. [NY Daily News]
- At the Z100 Jingle Ball in NYC, DNCE, Fifth Harmony, Hailee Steinfeld, Charlie Puth, Tinashe, Rita Ora, Jake Miller, and Sabrina Carpenter debuted their all-star "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" single which will raise money for the Robin Hood Foundation. [Z100]
- Halsey, Icona Pop, and Sting were among the performers at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert hosted by Conan O'Brien in Oslo. [YouTube]
- Adele and Coldplay were among the winners at this year's BBC Music Awards, though neither could make the ceremony. [BBC]
- Ed Sheeran is back after taking a year off from Twitter. He tweeted a mysterious blue square. [Twitter]
- Beyoncé and Blue Ivy posed with Mariah Carey and her kids backstage at the singer’s Christmas concert in NYC. [People]
- Uber employees allegedly tracked Beyoncé and other celebrities using the service's internal "God View." [The Guardian]
- The first trailer for Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, featuring Harry Styles, is out. [Idolator]
- Pink, Ellie Goulding, Sia, the Lumineers, Twenty One Pilots, and Justin Timberlake are among the artists eligible for a Best Original Song Academy Award nomination. [Variety]
- Bruno Mars, Sting, Ariana Grande, the Weekend, and John Legend performed on the live season finale of The Voice. [Direct Lyrics]
- A Massachusettes man received three years probation after pleading guilty to criminal harassment of Ariana Grande. [Lowell Sun]
- Fifth Harmony's Lauren Jauregui was arrested for weed. [TMZ]
- John Mayer tweeted that December 13 (aka his ex Taylor Swift's birthday) was "the lamest day of the year." Then he deleted it. [Just Jared]
HOLD ON, WE'RE GOING HOME
If you thought 2016 was bad - I'm releasing an album in 2017.
— James Blunt (@JamesBlunt) December 13, 2016
