Class of 2021 – The 100 Greatest Songs of the Year!
Playlist on Spotify at the bottom of each page.
#100-#81 | #80-#61 | #60-#41 | #40-#21 | #20-#11 | #10-#2 |#1
“The song has 3 distinct song sections and played by 3 different synth basses that intertwine and shift throughout ending in a snappy disco dance…”
80. Snapped Ankles “Shifting Basslines of the Cornucopians”
(from Forest Of Your Problems)
“The last tour in 2019 had the band performing dressed as the estate agents for developers of the gentrificated urban blight, selling off the DIY arts spaces and venues we played that precariously exist in rubble of our cities commercial zones.
We carried over some of the sentiments from these performances when approaching the Forest of your Problems songs. The lyrics take the grotesque charactature of cornucopian investors singing an ode to their fiscal gains won in times of crisis through opaque investments. The modern day piracy of the global investment portfolios that make huge gains when stocks suffer crashes due to pandemic or environmental disaster is something we feel needed to danced to!
The song has 3 distinct song sections and played by 3 different synth basses that intertwine and shift throughout ending in a snappy disco dance sung by a Town Crier (the main source of news in days before newspapers!) who delivers the kind of motivational mantras that entrepreneurs espouse such as ‘why join the navy when you could be a pirate’.”
– Snapped Ankles
79. Dry Cleaning “Her Hippo”
(from New Long Leg)
78. Self Esteem “Prioritise Pleasure”
(from Prioritise Pleasure)
77. Tkay Maidza “Cashmere”
(from Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 3)
76. Son Volt “Reverie”
(from Electro Melodier)
75. Helado Negro “Outside The Outside”
(from Far In)
74. Remi Wolf “Grumpy Old Man”
(from Juno)
73. Poppy “Flux”
(from Flux)
72. Summer Dean with Colter Wall “You’re Lucky She’s Lonely”
(from Bad Romantic)
71. Poté “Young Lies (feat. Damon Albarn)”
(from A Tenuous Tale Of Her)
“The story ended kind of sadly. Eventually some police came and asked me for a statement and then said they would deal with it…”
70. Pond “Human Touch”
(from 9)
“It was a sunny day in Freemantle and I was in the garden out in front of my house and a woman came up and asked if she could have a drink of water and use the toilet. She was having some kind of episode. We talked for quite a long time, maybe two hours. I suppose I was trying to stop her from doing something dangerous but it was also really good to chat.
The viciousness of the song’s sound is an expression of what was going on inside her mind. She was moving real quick and obviously had a lot going on. I don’t want to congratulate myself for helping her or anything but she was lovely. It was just a crazy time for her and she had a really cute dog. Her general aura was one of anger, violence – not physical – and desperation.
The story ended kind of sadly. Eventually some police came and asked me for a statement and then said they would deal with it, so I thought I’d better go inside. Then I actually saw her at the beach the next day! She didn’t recognize me, though. It’s just weird the way the system works, that they come along and do their whole police thing and then not help or anything. It makes me feel a bit weird.
The song doesn’t express the same compassion and pathos that I felt at the time. It’s a bit more of a rock song. The challenge of doing it live where the vocals overlap in some places may have crossed my mind at the time we recorded, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, ha ha!”
– Nicholas Allbrook
“It was my first experience doing a writing camp, which I was nervous about because I don’t like to write with other people…”
69. Amber Mark “Foreign Things”
(Single)
“I wrote ‘Foreign Things’ with a bunch of people; writers and producers who have become close friends of mine. It was my first experience doing a writing camp, which I was nervous about because I don’t like to write with other people. I tend to write and produce by myself because I feel like I always get so nervous and then my creativity is stifled ‘cause I’m thinking about what other people are thinking about. So I stay away from sessions with other people, but Julian [Bunetta], who is kind of running the show, convinced me. He’s somebody I look up to as a producer and writer and it ended up being a really great experience and me loving it.
We were in a new town, Ojai outside of Los Angeles, and none of us had been to it before and we were going into the holidays. People were about to take trips and vacations so we wanted to talk about the feeling when you’re in a new place with new people in a new culture. Especially when you’re on a vacation it’s so exciting and exhilarating that you never want to leave. You always consider ‘Maybe I should just move here’. A lot of tequila was had as well! So we felt ‘Let’s write about partying!’. That’s what ‘Foreign Things’ is about.
We played a bunch of music before we got started, things that were inspiring me. I had played a lot of Stevie Wonder, Bee Gees and Earth, Wind & Fire. Lots of Michael McDonald. Which is a weird one, but such a legend! I think he’s underrated, I feel like we need to give him more hype. Obviously we were playing some more contemporary stuff as well – old school Kanye, Graduation and Late Registration – but that was the direction. I’ve always loved a dead-on, real piano sound. There was a moment where I was trying to stay away from it, ‘cause I was doing it too much on every song I was putting out, but my original sound is throwing out simple piano sounds. So that’s where the idea came from.”
– Amber Mark
68. Sun June “Bad With Time”
(from Somewhere)
67. La Luz “In The Country”
(from La Luz)
66. Alfie Templeman “Wait, I Lied”
(from Forever Isn’t Long Enough)
65. Ducks Ltd. “Under The Rolling Moon”
(from Modern Fiction)
64. Baby Queen “These Drugs”
(from The Yearbook)
63. Lydia Ainsworth “Sparkles & Debris”
(from Sparkles & Debris)
62. Black Honey “Back Of The Bar”
(from Written & Directed)
61. Indigo Sparke “Bad Dreams”
(from Echo)
#100-#81 | #80-#61 | #60-#41 | #40-#21 | #20-#11 | #10-#2 |#1
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