What a Crop! On My Favorite Songs of 2021
The suffering of 2020 pays off with a spectacular slew of songs.
At some point in 2014, I paid about a dollar for the right to play The War on Drugs’ “An Ocean Between the Waves” on iTunes as often as I like. Since then, I’ve listened through the track 240 times, and I rock during every beat of those seven minutes and twelve seconds.
That’s over 24 hours of near ecstasy for a buck. What art form offers more for less? In the most terrible way, this means musicians are the most exploited of all artists. Which most musicians will tell you!
In the most beautiful way, though, this means each song is a gift. Every year I wonder: will there really be ten new songs to learn and love? And then every year there are, waiting to be heard over speakers in restaurants, or mined from Metacritic, or, best of all, passed on through word-of-mouth.
So now I’m passing this year’s gifts on to you.
And there were way more than ten to choose from. The music this year was so spectacular that some incredible tracks missed the mix entirely, including:
The best album The Killers have made.
The best album Lord Huron have made.
A really dang good old-timey-themed Sturgill Simpson album
Ye’s “Jail”
And then there were other songs released previously, but which were new to me, including Andy Gullahorn’s “Not Too Late” and Curtis Harding’s “On and On.”
In any case, for all its many flaws, at least 2021 caused my iTunes to explode in a cornucopia of sound. I hope you enjoy my ten favorite songs of the year, which I’ll get to after this brief commercial break.
10. Waxahatchee - “Fire”
This was my jam of the summer almost solely on the flow of the little section where Katie Crutchfield sings:
I take up driving past places been tainted
I put on a good show for you
And when I turn back around
Will you drain me back out?
Will you let me believe that I broke through?
The sweet tune also serves as a tender reminder of the falseness of fantasy. I think of crossing over the Ross Island in those warm June days after the crazy heat wave, feeling like this song was both steering and warning me into insight.
9. Jungle - “Romeo (ft. Bas)”
Look, if you name drop E. Honda and Dhalsim in a rhyme over a Motown harmony samples and then have a chorus revolving around sugar cubes, that’s a concoction I’m gonna enjoy imbibing.
8. The War On Drugs - “Old Skin”
This list could easily be packed with songs from I Don't Live Here Anymore, which was my favorite album of the year. “Harmonia’s Dream,” “Change,” the title track…so many solid jams. “Old Skin” and one other will have to suffice.
The story Adam Granduciel tells here is a standard slow-building working man’s anthem, complete with harmonica to make The Boss and Bob Dylan proud. But the sound is unique, recast in an era of further frayed American fabric, a fractured middle class.
I was born in a pyramid
By an old interstate
Been down at the yard
Working my whole lifeTo follow my father's dream
Then watch it fade away
Wrapped in our old tired skin
Peelin' away
Now stack on sonic force from The Bends-era Radiohead and Heartbreaker-like cohesion, and you get one of IDLHA’s greatest hits. The groove paves the way for the defiant final stanzas and outro:
Well, there's a price for everything
They'll try to kill you from the start
So take control of anything
That tries to pull us all apart
I ain't sure of nothing, babe
'Til I can feel it in my heartSo I keep movin' on
Yeah, keep holdin' on
Yeah
Every time this song fades away, I want the jam to last forever, and in live shows it does and I’m so psyched to see them at the Theater of the Clouds and you better not mess that up for me, COVID!
7. Wolf Alice - “Delicious Things”
I’m also a sucker for songs wherein a musician goes to Los Angeles and is simultaneously seduced and disgusted by the opulence and excess of Southern California. Guns’n’Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” and The Decemberists’ “Los Angeles, I’m Yours” are prime examples of this minigenre.
But if those tracks were from Midwest and Pacific Northwestern-rooted pilgrimages, “Delicious Things” is distinctly British, and the blend of two iconic world cultures produces a dark and delightful effect:
I don't care, I'm in the Hollywood Hills
I'm no longer pulling pints, I'm no longer cashing tills
And I'm alive, I feel like Marilyn Monroe
If you're all poppin' pills, you know I won't say no
I won't say no, I'll give it a go
The song’s final revelation is homesick, with the main character calling home to check in with her mum. And then there’s that soaring chorus to remind us why Ellen Roswell was even L.A. in the first place: she’s a rock star.
I'll give it a
Shot for the spot at the top, a girl like me
Would you believe I'm in Los Angeles?Don't lose sight
6. Big Red Machine - “Phoenix (feat. Fleet Foxes & Anais Mitchell)”
I've enjoyed the music of Fleet Foxes for years, and last year’s “Sunblind” was one of my favorites, but in all those tunes, I don’t know if one has better showcased and suited the voice of Robin Pecknold than “Phoenix.” Aaron Dessner’s knack for soundscapes frames a different sort of working class lament, which is then tempered by the love-woven chorus sung by Justin Vernon and Anais Mitchell.
I’m sad to report to my Phoenician friends that Phoenix isn’t really mentioned specifically in the track. Fleet Foxes are definitely associated with Arizona, though, as their video for “Helplessness Blues” has some of my all-time favorite footage of the Valley of the Sun.
5. Olivia Rodrigo - “drivers license”
You may as well just watch the SNL sketch during which I first heard this track last February. I’m not gonna explain the song any better. “drivers license” is pure pop perfection. And, yes, the bridge. The bridge!
Despite the fact Lana makes fun of me for it, Rodrigo’s Sour is a tidy little breakup record, like a late-‘90s homage wrapped in Swiftian pop and raging Alanisian scorn. Standouts include “Deja Vu” and “Traitor.” Admittedly, this album relies a little too often on the the stupidest #@&%ing trend, though I suspect Rodrigo’s word choice in “drivers license” is intentional beyond mere shock value.
What I loved most about this song, though, was learning the suburbs Rodrigo is from and sings about so melancholically happen to be the very suburbs dearest to my heart: Murrieta, California. I hear you on driving around the Temecula and feeling all moody, Olivia! Thanks for dropping some true pop art into the Rainbow Gap.
4. Wolf Alice - “The Last Man on the Earth”
Blue Weekend is an outstanding album, with wild swings from snarling punk to shimmery Britpop to hip-hop swagger, but my favorite particular track is “The Last Man On Earth,” which is that lovely sort of English piano ballad, a slow build to a brilliant choral belt, all vast and spiritual…
A penny for your truth
Will I'll hedge my bets on love?
'Cause it's lies after lies after lies
But do you even fool yourself?
And then a light shines on youAnd when your friends are talking
You hardly hear a word
…before descending down to end again in a whisper.
You were the first person here
And the last man on the Earth
But the light
3. Taylor Leonhardt - “Poetry”
The most deeply satisfying worship stays simple, and “Poetry” begins with a question:
Isn’t it so hard for most of us
To find the kind of patience that will trust
The slow steady work of God beneath the surface
Every moment working for our good?
And then Taylor Leonhardt spends the rest of the song replying to that lament. To title a song “Poetry” is audacious, yet every line of lyric here echoes Scripture’s economy and meaning.
Surely I’ve been wrong along the way
but I will not be called by my mistakes
He calls me his friend
When all I see’s where I’ve been
I hear him tell me where I am going
Shortly after this album came out I met the Nashville songwriter Andy Gullahorn (previously mentioned) at a retreat and he, of course, knew this album and knows Taylor and he mentioned her brilliant choruses. So I’m not gonna post the lyrics to that because the choruses must be heard!
This song was a heartfiller, Hold Still is a terrific album, and I know I’m not the only person led to thank God for Taylor’s music this year.
2. The War On Drugs - “I Don’t Wanna Wait”
I Don’t Live Here Anymore is formed different than The War On Drugs’ past efforts. It’s triangular, like the shape around the words on the album cover, and the peak of the mountain is “I Don’t Wanna Wait,” which begins with Charlie Hall putting down a beat in honor of “In the Air Tonight” while John Natchez’s mournful sax winds around Granduciel’s distorted vocals. From there, the track drops into a driving chorus.
If I had one complaint with IDLHA in early listens, it was that the album lacked an immediate standout classic like “Red Eyes” or “Pain” or “Thinking of a Place.” After repeated plays, and after hearing Lucius sing along in a live-streamed concert, I’m now convinced “I Don’t Wanna Wait” is as great as anything WoD has recorded.
Then there’s that final third where the song really takes flight, when the chorus keys up to to heart-crushing levels and Adam’s fretwork just absolutely scorches, letting the Spirit sing what words alone can’t. 🤟🏼Epic.
1. Big Red Machine - “Reese”
The finest songs distill feelings. The feeling on “I Don’t Wanna Wait” is yearning and on “drivers license” it’s heartbreak and on “Poetry” it’s praise and trust. The feeling on “Reese” is something else, see-saw complicated and mournful and reeling.
For awhile after I first heard it, “Reese” was hidden on iTunes, or unplayable for some reason, and I’d listen through the rest of the album and enjoy the other tracks and feel like something indescribable was missing. I didn’t know right away it was this song, since “Reese” takes a time to learn and know and hear, but no song has sunk in further.
These complex moods are what fans have learned to expect from Big Red Machine, a collaboration between Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon. How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last has a bunch of treats throughout (including the haunting title track), so it’s a tribute to this song’s brilliance that it outshines even guest cameos from Fleet Foxes and Taylor Swift.
And then there are Vernon’s vocals throughout the song’s second half, the low “Well I’m more than that” bridge; the garbled transition; the triumph of his falsetto scatting, and then the englightenment of the repeated outro:
I won't belabor points but I will hit you on the head
I won't belabor points but I will hit it on the head
Anais Mitchell is playing at the performing arts center here in Auburn this spring and I can't wait. Great list! Apart from that Big Red Machine album I probably listened to the new Kiwi Jr. album the most because I'll always be a sucker for jangle pop
I was hoping Taylor was going to end up on here. Another for you to seek out is Ella Mine’s album Dream Wars, utterly spectacular. Scott Mulvahill is another, as well as The Arcadian Wild. Good stuff.