Songs of 2018 Part 3: Top Twenty
20) Dear Maro - Frequency Drift (Symphonic Rock)
First track to crack my top 20 and this one was a bit of a surprise after my sorting at how high it was. It's ultimately not hard to see why it's there though, firmly in my sweet spot of driving rock with a more symphonic epic vocal layer and a heavy string presence. It's a great bit of storytelling through music and lyrics.
19) Let's See What the Night Can Do - Jason Mraz (Pop)
Not the first mention of Jason Mraz but the first writeup, this track ran away with song of the week while two further tracks from his album cracked my top five that week. My opinion of this album and this song may have waned a little due to the fact that I'm constantly having to argue with Jez about its merits, but ultimately I don't have any objective measurement of Jason Mraz's merits. He just makes simple, sweet, charismatic pop music that delivers feel-good vibes, so if you don't respond well to it, then there's actually something wrong with you, not with it.
18) $GNMS - Arc Iris (Experimental Pop Rock)
I made a lot of jokes when this took out my song of the week about the trainwreck that is the title. And it's one of three songs in my top 20 whose titles I would completely renovate if given the choice. This is, to explain, a reimagining of an earlier Arc Iris song called "Money Gnomes" (which original version I listened to after this) and this new version just amps up the curious progressive parts of the songwriting and delivers a strange and sometimes unsettling, but ultimately very engaging bit of pop rock.
17) No Ordinary Life - Matt Corby (Contemporary RnB)
Matt Corby was another artist who we listened to in 2016 to no effect, but delivered a cracker of an album in 2018. This song that incorporates a heavy string presence including some harp vibes just has a beautiful arc and a beautiful sound to it.
16) Yr Love - Roosevelt (Synthpop)
Exhibit no 2 in "top 20 song titles I'd completely renovate", this track is a very daggy entry to my top 20, but I love a bit of dancepop, and I love a bit of dancepop that's thoughtfully constructed. This song (for which there is NO reason to call it Yr Love rather than Your Love except to be hip and down with the kids, which Roosevelt probably isn't anyway) kicks off with a good driving beat and growling synth track but then transitions to more upbeat 90s-esque house vibes and really goes to another level. Shame about the stupid title.
15) The Space Between - Auri (Progressive Synthrock)
This is another sort of sweet-spot pick for me: it's interesting electronic music but with a folk influence and that kind of symphonic metal vocal character over the top. Yes, this song sounds quite remarkably similar to the theme to "The Neverending Story", but that's actually a big point in its favour rather than a caveat. Some really great chord progressions in here as well.
14) Inferno Galore - Carpenter Brut (Extreme Retrowave)
Man, this song and its ranking is likely to get a few noses out of joint if people hear it, but man I love it. It sounds like if a jukebox from the 1980s developed sentience and produced a noisy song agglomerating sounds from all of its most popular songs. It's wicked-paced chaotic energy, is incredibly camp and silly and over-the-top and a prime candidate for my top 20.
13) Evermore - Leftover Salmon (Bluegrass Jam)
This is potentially an even weirder choice than the previous one, mainly because I openly and violently dislike bluegrass music generally. This track sneaks in by virtue of the fact that it leans more on the 'jam rock' side of things, and while I'm mixed on the opening verses and chorus, the solo section in this song is absolutely phenomenal and just drives this into amazing musical territories. It contains both the best mandolin and the best banjo solos you're likely to hear all year.
12) Lotus - Gang Gang Dance (Experimental Dreampop)
I definitely feel like I'm stepping over some strange-shaped stepping stones en route to my top 10, from Carpenter Brut to Leftover Salmon and now this. This is a very trippy bit of dreampop music, drawing influences from classic Oriental folk music but delivered through heavily layered and produced synth. Ultimately it's a unique soundscape with a very cool psychedelic vibe and some amazing electronic production to create it.
11) C'est La Vie No. 2 - Phosphorescent (Electrofolk)
Just missing out on the top ten is song number three from Phosphorescent (given I've already mentioned there are four on the top 50, you'd be thinking his album's likely to feature on my top albums list - and you'd be right, but that's tomorrow's post). I said when I first heard this that it would either be my song of the week, or my enthusiasm would disappear and I'd dislike it. But neither was right because I still loved it, and continue to love it, but I also loved a subsequent song better (still to come, naturally). This track feels kind of boxy and repetitive, founded on a repeated sequence of synth chords and following a simple verse-chorus structure which also feature a kind of antimetabole motif of "I did this... to do that... I don't do this... to do that no more" so it feels formulaic and could ultimately become tiresome. Simply put though, it doesn't, and it just cuts through to me in really meaningful ways from the sparse and expansive synth swirls to the nostalgic and bittersweet tone of the lyrics. Oh and also, this is exhibit 3 in the "song titles I'd renovate" - unless of course there was also No. 1 on the album, which there isn't.
10) Starcrossed Losers - The Fratellis (Indie Pop Rock)
Jez and I have talked about this particular song likely to be our combined number 1 of the year as it's a prime suspect to be even higher on his list than it is on mine. The Fratellis' album "In Your Own Sweet Time" was basically an incessant sequence of banging pop rock songs, any one of which could emerge as a big highlight and a hit single. This track is, however, a clear standout, just building this immediately catchy pop tune around a slightly country-infused rock foundation. I would say that it's ultimately just a likeable type of song that may not stand up to deep analysis but is just magnetic for what it is.
9) Christmas Down Under - Phosphorescent (Electrofolk)
One thing I tend to hate is electronically-rendered vocal lines, but given that this - Phosphorescent song number 4 (and final), and a song still to come - both heavily feature these, apparently I'm softening on it, or this is just delivered extremely well. This track lays down a gorgeous earthy folk foundation and delivers this slightly psychedelic, echoey vocal line over the top that explores both the sunny themes of a Summer Christmas (I'm unsure of the salience of this for Athens, Georgia-based Phosphorescent) and some wider philosophical questions about what Christmas means. It's simply a beautiful song in spite of the slightly artificial overtones of the sound.
8) Numb - Meg Myers (Indie Rock)
I mentioned there was more Meg Myers to come. This was absolutely the standout of that album (and it beat out all the Wild Pink tracks previously mentioned the week it was released), delivering this quirky but angry message over a surprisingly effective raucous rock backing. I don't have a punk song on my top twenty this year (I have the previous two years) so this one feels like the stand-in because it's full of an in-your-face and quirky attitude and noisy energy and has a great drive to it.
7) Compete - Precog (Dark Wave)
I also mentioned - or implied, at least - that there was more PreCog to come in my top 50. This song also takes the yearly "song that starts slow and builds layers" spot for 2018. It's quite a depressing and slow-burn listen, but with Jason Thomas' gorgeous falsetto and glissandoes it really extracts a lot of haunting beauty out of a soft retrowave tune. And the way it builds towards the very last strains and brings in the synth pipes, it really earns every minute of its runtime.
6) Minotaur Forgiving Theseus - Moonface (Neo-Psychedelia)
Oh what a strange song this is. Taken from an even stranger album (that includes many songs about the Minotaur forgiving various figures involved in his downfall), this is just an excellent piece of really trippy psychedelia. Based around steel pans and involving a complex melange of other tuned percussive layers, it's also the second track in my top 10 to be built on heavily rendered vocals. It's a really inventive concept in the first place for the album and this track, but it also sounds like nothing else I've heard. Psychedelic calypso, or something, it's a bizarre but extraordinary experience that starts impressively and goes into strange, unsettling places that ends up being quite poignant. This also features possibly my lyric of the year in the description of Theseus as "the hound that takes a piss upon the ground where he stands and says "I claim this land, and I claim this tiny sea".
5) Ancient Names (Part I and II) - Lord Huron (Prog Rock)
Alright, so now we're getting into controversy. This is the highest-ranked song to have originally only taken runner-up song of the week (it was second to my #20 song of the year "Dear Maro" by Frequency Drift) and the only reason that I gave it second, despite liking it a lot better (and it's only grown on me since then) is that it's actually two separate songs on the album - part I and II but running one after the other. So I felt it was a cheat at the time to consider them as one, but I'm now officially embracing the cheat, for the simple reason that it only works as a single piece of music. Individually, part I and part II are both amazing bits of music, but together they're phenomenal. What's more, individually they don't make sense because Part I finishes with a build-up to an explosive climax that then never comes (because that climax IS part II) and part II just starts big and loud and fast-paced and lacks the build-up that part I earns. I recently learned that Tool don't allow their music onto streaming platforms because Maynard James Keenan strongly believes they need to be listened to in toto rather than split by individual songs as would happen on streaming platforms, and I just can't understand the reasoning behind splitting this song into two parts in this way. Anyway, I've explained why I'm considering this song as one piece (and why my 'top 20 of 2018' playlist has 21 songs on it) but let's talk about why it's my #5 song of the year. I've touched upon how fucking great the build-up to the explosive finale of Part II is, and it's one of the most foot-tapping cathartic bits of music I've heard all year, but more than just being a great build, it's really interesting, thoughtful but driving rock music throughout it. The instrumentation, vocal work, is all spot-on and the only reason this isn't higher (now that I've embraced the cheat) is that I love the four songs still to come even more.
4) The Signal is Cut - Funke and the Two Tone Baby (Electrofunk)
Yes, I love this very, very strange song even more than "Ancient Names", and I feel like this one would get more noses up than any other based on how high it's landed, if anybody were to read this post except my mother and brother, and I know my brother happens to like this song as well (although probably not this much). Funke and the Two Tone Baby is a very strange musician, based around a furious guitar style, a whole lot of looped samples including his own beatboxing and a really unhinged shouty style of singing. This track is the perfect embodiment of his sound and style - I haven't really deconstructed the lyrics but it appears from my limited perspective to be touching on the themes of being a bit psychologically unhinged and unstable - as it features this very homemade amateurish musical line but then it's so crammed full of his explosive personality that it's just thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. It's definitely a strange song but I find it completely compelling.
3) The Girl Doesn't Get It - Belle and Sebastian (Indie Pop)
It feels weird that I haven't mentioned Belle and Sebastian yet (except low down in my top 100) but here they are right near the top. This track came up on part I of their series of three EPs (which I've considered together as one album for tomorrow's post) very, very early on this year - I think in fact the second week of the music project - and while it was a runaway song of the week winner, of course it was because hardly anything is released in those first few weeks. But this song has in fact spent all year being considered right at the top of my rankings because it's a really sunny-toned pop song with a lovely synth backing that belies the searing cynicism of Belle and Sebastian's lyrics and message. It's catchy, progressively interesting and dynamic and perfectly showcases the group's trademark wit and sense of irony as well as their melodious voices - all things I've been a sort of pseudofan of for years when I've caught their other songs, but this year I was able to fully embrace.
2) Tonya Harding (In D Major) - Sufjan Stevens (Folktronica)
Taking out the runner-up song of the year spot is an artist who really shouldn't be any stranger to this echelon when it comes to my personal preferences, but this is really an extraordinary song even by Sufjan's standards. Released as a standalone single in December last year to kind of coincide-but-otherwise-not-be-affilliated-at-all with the release of the film I, Tonya, this elegy of sorts to Tonya Harding features a very thoughtful and interesting depiction of Harding, covering all facets of the mythology surrounding her and the Nancy Kerrigan attack with pathos and the right level of ambivalence. But where this song really shines is in the soundscape Sufjan produces: it's a perfect musical depiction of a figure skating milieu, embodying this cold but magical fairytale kind of aesthetic but paradoxically so full of warmth and depth as well. It's an immensely well constructed and produced bit of music fraught with conflicted sympathies and it really delivers a knockout punch for the mythology and ethos surrounding this figure. According to an article I read when this was released, Tonya herself has not heard the song and doesn't care to, and I don't blame her as I can actually imagine it cutting quite deep. It cuts me pretty deep and I've never had my rival kneecapped to try and cheat my way to a figure skating win.
And if I'm not mistaken, that leaves us with...
1) Hell and Back - Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear (Indie Folk Rock)
And my song of the year… well it will seem like a very unassuming, even underwhelming pick at first. I played this song for Bec telling her that it was almost certainly my song of the year and, in true Bec fashion, her response was "Really??". Firstly, it's a song that really needs to build to its maximum effect, and this has a beautiful trajectory from its humble beginnings to its quite intense finale. The instrumentation throughout is note-perfect with the guitar, strings, and Ruth "Mama Bear" Ward's backing vocals all used to their full potential to further the song. The other element that I isolate here is Madisen Ward's voice, because it's so deep and rich and full of feeling and I adore the way he hits the key words in the chorus (listen to it and you'll know what I mean). At the end of the day though, the reason this song is in the number 1 spot is I can just listen to it over and over - this has about double the number of plays in my play history as its nearest competitor for the year. I have it on repeat sometimes really to get to the bottom of what makes this song so strikingly beautiful. I haven't quite gotten there yet, but it's here in the top mantle for that reason above all others.
And that's my songs of 2018. The longlist of 255 songs that were considered for the top 100 is publicly available here if you have a Google Play Music subscription. I'm not sure how it works (i.e. if my mother can play excerpts from the songs or not) if you don't have a subscription. So, just get a subscription.
First track to crack my top 20 and this one was a bit of a surprise after my sorting at how high it was. It's ultimately not hard to see why it's there though, firmly in my sweet spot of driving rock with a more symphonic epic vocal layer and a heavy string presence. It's a great bit of storytelling through music and lyrics.
19) Let's See What the Night Can Do - Jason Mraz (Pop)
Not the first mention of Jason Mraz but the first writeup, this track ran away with song of the week while two further tracks from his album cracked my top five that week. My opinion of this album and this song may have waned a little due to the fact that I'm constantly having to argue with Jez about its merits, but ultimately I don't have any objective measurement of Jason Mraz's merits. He just makes simple, sweet, charismatic pop music that delivers feel-good vibes, so if you don't respond well to it, then there's actually something wrong with you, not with it.
18) $GNMS - Arc Iris (Experimental Pop Rock)
I made a lot of jokes when this took out my song of the week about the trainwreck that is the title. And it's one of three songs in my top 20 whose titles I would completely renovate if given the choice. This is, to explain, a reimagining of an earlier Arc Iris song called "Money Gnomes" (which original version I listened to after this) and this new version just amps up the curious progressive parts of the songwriting and delivers a strange and sometimes unsettling, but ultimately very engaging bit of pop rock.
17) No Ordinary Life - Matt Corby (Contemporary RnB)
Matt Corby was another artist who we listened to in 2016 to no effect, but delivered a cracker of an album in 2018. This song that incorporates a heavy string presence including some harp vibes just has a beautiful arc and a beautiful sound to it.
16) Yr Love - Roosevelt (Synthpop)
Exhibit no 2 in "top 20 song titles I'd completely renovate", this track is a very daggy entry to my top 20, but I love a bit of dancepop, and I love a bit of dancepop that's thoughtfully constructed. This song (for which there is NO reason to call it Yr Love rather than Your Love except to be hip and down with the kids, which Roosevelt probably isn't anyway) kicks off with a good driving beat and growling synth track but then transitions to more upbeat 90s-esque house vibes and really goes to another level. Shame about the stupid title.
15) The Space Between - Auri (Progressive Synthrock)
This is another sort of sweet-spot pick for me: it's interesting electronic music but with a folk influence and that kind of symphonic metal vocal character over the top. Yes, this song sounds quite remarkably similar to the theme to "The Neverending Story", but that's actually a big point in its favour rather than a caveat. Some really great chord progressions in here as well.
14) Inferno Galore - Carpenter Brut (Extreme Retrowave)
Man, this song and its ranking is likely to get a few noses out of joint if people hear it, but man I love it. It sounds like if a jukebox from the 1980s developed sentience and produced a noisy song agglomerating sounds from all of its most popular songs. It's wicked-paced chaotic energy, is incredibly camp and silly and over-the-top and a prime candidate for my top 20.
13) Evermore - Leftover Salmon (Bluegrass Jam)
This is potentially an even weirder choice than the previous one, mainly because I openly and violently dislike bluegrass music generally. This track sneaks in by virtue of the fact that it leans more on the 'jam rock' side of things, and while I'm mixed on the opening verses and chorus, the solo section in this song is absolutely phenomenal and just drives this into amazing musical territories. It contains both the best mandolin and the best banjo solos you're likely to hear all year.
12) Lotus - Gang Gang Dance (Experimental Dreampop)
I definitely feel like I'm stepping over some strange-shaped stepping stones en route to my top 10, from Carpenter Brut to Leftover Salmon and now this. This is a very trippy bit of dreampop music, drawing influences from classic Oriental folk music but delivered through heavily layered and produced synth. Ultimately it's a unique soundscape with a very cool psychedelic vibe and some amazing electronic production to create it.
11) C'est La Vie No. 2 - Phosphorescent (Electrofolk)
Just missing out on the top ten is song number three from Phosphorescent (given I've already mentioned there are four on the top 50, you'd be thinking his album's likely to feature on my top albums list - and you'd be right, but that's tomorrow's post). I said when I first heard this that it would either be my song of the week, or my enthusiasm would disappear and I'd dislike it. But neither was right because I still loved it, and continue to love it, but I also loved a subsequent song better (still to come, naturally). This track feels kind of boxy and repetitive, founded on a repeated sequence of synth chords and following a simple verse-chorus structure which also feature a kind of antimetabole motif of "I did this... to do that... I don't do this... to do that no more" so it feels formulaic and could ultimately become tiresome. Simply put though, it doesn't, and it just cuts through to me in really meaningful ways from the sparse and expansive synth swirls to the nostalgic and bittersweet tone of the lyrics. Oh and also, this is exhibit 3 in the "song titles I'd renovate" - unless of course there was also No. 1 on the album, which there isn't.
10) Starcrossed Losers - The Fratellis (Indie Pop Rock)
Jez and I have talked about this particular song likely to be our combined number 1 of the year as it's a prime suspect to be even higher on his list than it is on mine. The Fratellis' album "In Your Own Sweet Time" was basically an incessant sequence of banging pop rock songs, any one of which could emerge as a big highlight and a hit single. This track is, however, a clear standout, just building this immediately catchy pop tune around a slightly country-infused rock foundation. I would say that it's ultimately just a likeable type of song that may not stand up to deep analysis but is just magnetic for what it is.
9) Christmas Down Under - Phosphorescent (Electrofolk)
One thing I tend to hate is electronically-rendered vocal lines, but given that this - Phosphorescent song number 4 (and final), and a song still to come - both heavily feature these, apparently I'm softening on it, or this is just delivered extremely well. This track lays down a gorgeous earthy folk foundation and delivers this slightly psychedelic, echoey vocal line over the top that explores both the sunny themes of a Summer Christmas (I'm unsure of the salience of this for Athens, Georgia-based Phosphorescent) and some wider philosophical questions about what Christmas means. It's simply a beautiful song in spite of the slightly artificial overtones of the sound.
8) Numb - Meg Myers (Indie Rock)
I mentioned there was more Meg Myers to come. This was absolutely the standout of that album (and it beat out all the Wild Pink tracks previously mentioned the week it was released), delivering this quirky but angry message over a surprisingly effective raucous rock backing. I don't have a punk song on my top twenty this year (I have the previous two years) so this one feels like the stand-in because it's full of an in-your-face and quirky attitude and noisy energy and has a great drive to it.
7) Compete - Precog (Dark Wave)
I also mentioned - or implied, at least - that there was more PreCog to come in my top 50. This song also takes the yearly "song that starts slow and builds layers" spot for 2018. It's quite a depressing and slow-burn listen, but with Jason Thomas' gorgeous falsetto and glissandoes it really extracts a lot of haunting beauty out of a soft retrowave tune. And the way it builds towards the very last strains and brings in the synth pipes, it really earns every minute of its runtime.
6) Minotaur Forgiving Theseus - Moonface (Neo-Psychedelia)
Oh what a strange song this is. Taken from an even stranger album (that includes many songs about the Minotaur forgiving various figures involved in his downfall), this is just an excellent piece of really trippy psychedelia. Based around steel pans and involving a complex melange of other tuned percussive layers, it's also the second track in my top 10 to be built on heavily rendered vocals. It's a really inventive concept in the first place for the album and this track, but it also sounds like nothing else I've heard. Psychedelic calypso, or something, it's a bizarre but extraordinary experience that starts impressively and goes into strange, unsettling places that ends up being quite poignant. This also features possibly my lyric of the year in the description of Theseus as "the hound that takes a piss upon the ground where he stands and says "I claim this land, and I claim this tiny sea".
5) Ancient Names (Part I and II) - Lord Huron (Prog Rock)
Alright, so now we're getting into controversy. This is the highest-ranked song to have originally only taken runner-up song of the week (it was second to my #20 song of the year "Dear Maro" by Frequency Drift) and the only reason that I gave it second, despite liking it a lot better (and it's only grown on me since then) is that it's actually two separate songs on the album - part I and II but running one after the other. So I felt it was a cheat at the time to consider them as one, but I'm now officially embracing the cheat, for the simple reason that it only works as a single piece of music. Individually, part I and part II are both amazing bits of music, but together they're phenomenal. What's more, individually they don't make sense because Part I finishes with a build-up to an explosive climax that then never comes (because that climax IS part II) and part II just starts big and loud and fast-paced and lacks the build-up that part I earns. I recently learned that Tool don't allow their music onto streaming platforms because Maynard James Keenan strongly believes they need to be listened to in toto rather than split by individual songs as would happen on streaming platforms, and I just can't understand the reasoning behind splitting this song into two parts in this way. Anyway, I've explained why I'm considering this song as one piece (and why my 'top 20 of 2018' playlist has 21 songs on it) but let's talk about why it's my #5 song of the year. I've touched upon how fucking great the build-up to the explosive finale of Part II is, and it's one of the most foot-tapping cathartic bits of music I've heard all year, but more than just being a great build, it's really interesting, thoughtful but driving rock music throughout it. The instrumentation, vocal work, is all spot-on and the only reason this isn't higher (now that I've embraced the cheat) is that I love the four songs still to come even more.
4) The Signal is Cut - Funke and the Two Tone Baby (Electrofunk)
Yes, I love this very, very strange song even more than "Ancient Names", and I feel like this one would get more noses up than any other based on how high it's landed, if anybody were to read this post except my mother and brother, and I know my brother happens to like this song as well (although probably not this much). Funke and the Two Tone Baby is a very strange musician, based around a furious guitar style, a whole lot of looped samples including his own beatboxing and a really unhinged shouty style of singing. This track is the perfect embodiment of his sound and style - I haven't really deconstructed the lyrics but it appears from my limited perspective to be touching on the themes of being a bit psychologically unhinged and unstable - as it features this very homemade amateurish musical line but then it's so crammed full of his explosive personality that it's just thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. It's definitely a strange song but I find it completely compelling.
3) The Girl Doesn't Get It - Belle and Sebastian (Indie Pop)
It feels weird that I haven't mentioned Belle and Sebastian yet (except low down in my top 100) but here they are right near the top. This track came up on part I of their series of three EPs (which I've considered together as one album for tomorrow's post) very, very early on this year - I think in fact the second week of the music project - and while it was a runaway song of the week winner, of course it was because hardly anything is released in those first few weeks. But this song has in fact spent all year being considered right at the top of my rankings because it's a really sunny-toned pop song with a lovely synth backing that belies the searing cynicism of Belle and Sebastian's lyrics and message. It's catchy, progressively interesting and dynamic and perfectly showcases the group's trademark wit and sense of irony as well as their melodious voices - all things I've been a sort of pseudofan of for years when I've caught their other songs, but this year I was able to fully embrace.
2) Tonya Harding (In D Major) - Sufjan Stevens (Folktronica)
Taking out the runner-up song of the year spot is an artist who really shouldn't be any stranger to this echelon when it comes to my personal preferences, but this is really an extraordinary song even by Sufjan's standards. Released as a standalone single in December last year to kind of coincide-but-otherwise-not-be-affilliated-at-all with the release of the film I, Tonya, this elegy of sorts to Tonya Harding features a very thoughtful and interesting depiction of Harding, covering all facets of the mythology surrounding her and the Nancy Kerrigan attack with pathos and the right level of ambivalence. But where this song really shines is in the soundscape Sufjan produces: it's a perfect musical depiction of a figure skating milieu, embodying this cold but magical fairytale kind of aesthetic but paradoxically so full of warmth and depth as well. It's an immensely well constructed and produced bit of music fraught with conflicted sympathies and it really delivers a knockout punch for the mythology and ethos surrounding this figure. According to an article I read when this was released, Tonya herself has not heard the song and doesn't care to, and I don't blame her as I can actually imagine it cutting quite deep. It cuts me pretty deep and I've never had my rival kneecapped to try and cheat my way to a figure skating win.
And if I'm not mistaken, that leaves us with...
1) Hell and Back - Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear (Indie Folk Rock)
And my song of the year… well it will seem like a very unassuming, even underwhelming pick at first. I played this song for Bec telling her that it was almost certainly my song of the year and, in true Bec fashion, her response was "Really??". Firstly, it's a song that really needs to build to its maximum effect, and this has a beautiful trajectory from its humble beginnings to its quite intense finale. The instrumentation throughout is note-perfect with the guitar, strings, and Ruth "Mama Bear" Ward's backing vocals all used to their full potential to further the song. The other element that I isolate here is Madisen Ward's voice, because it's so deep and rich and full of feeling and I adore the way he hits the key words in the chorus (listen to it and you'll know what I mean). At the end of the day though, the reason this song is in the number 1 spot is I can just listen to it over and over - this has about double the number of plays in my play history as its nearest competitor for the year. I have it on repeat sometimes really to get to the bottom of what makes this song so strikingly beautiful. I haven't quite gotten there yet, but it's here in the top mantle for that reason above all others.
And that's my songs of 2018. The longlist of 255 songs that were considered for the top 100 is publicly available here if you have a Google Play Music subscription. I'm not sure how it works (i.e. if my mother can play excerpts from the songs or not) if you don't have a subscription. So, just get a subscription.
posted by Sean's Beard at 7:28 PM
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