Spotify playlist here
Almost immediately upon starting to identify the Top 10 pop songs of the 2010s, I realized I had made a huge mistake
What I had been thinking of as “the last 10 years” turned out to be just “the last 5 years”. The beginning of decades often feel more like the preceding decade than they do the decade they belong to.
Just like, if I didn’t tell you that the sartorial choices of the people in this video were made in 1993, you could easily guess 1988.
It doesn’t help that it’s home footage of a mall in Clarksville, Indiana which some may argue, warrants a handicap of 5-to-10 years being applied to all fashion related guesses.
The “last 5 years” list is a much easier list and unfortunately, the same list I thought I was setting out to make, much the way this home videographer set out to film the River Falls Mall in 1993.
The difference is that, unlike Duke Marsh at the River Falls Mall in 1993, I did not so easily, nor cleanly, complete the task I set out to.
Don’t Look Back
As I began to dig into the 2010s (something I don’t suggest anyone do for fun), one Wikipedia list after another quickly deflated my excitement for what I thought would be a light, fun little exercise.
The early 2010s, I think we can all agree, were really frustrating years.
Not only was I not getting my shit together, a lot of really catchy pop songs came out that I largely forgot about or associated with the previous decade.
“I have to put that song on the list…and that one…and that one…aaaannnddd now Adele is gone.”
I was amazed at the list of artists I assumed would make this list who did not.
But what’s the challenge of making a much easier top 20 list?
I stuck by my original vision. Boil down the sugar-pop songs of the decade into a concise 10 song set of, well, basically caramel if I added a little butter.
I did not chose the most popular or even influential songs of the 2010s.
My goal was to find the songs that:
- 1) were on the Billboard 100 at one time. (I had to start somewhere).
- 2) were, more importantly, the most pure, concentrated ball of sugar possible.
My litmus test was, how much do I want to gorge myself on this song?
As much as the way Tina Fey ate cake after Charlottesville in 2017?
Where Tina Fey ate out anger and sadness, I wanted to eat the songs of the 2010s out of pure joy. Because experiencing pure joy is the reason we all binge on sweets.
I didn’t limit myself to simply researching and listing out the decade’s most popular songs, nor did I take a journalistic stab at providing some kind of insight as to the most influential songs of the 2010s.
This is not even a list of the decade’s best pop songs.
It is a list of the best, most poppy, Pop songs from the last 10 years.
The songs so sticky you can’t touch them without spider webs of cotton candy clinging to your brain fingers for the rest of the day.
And not just catchy melodies. These songs needed to be lyrically well written the way the best pop songs are: so smart and clever they’re almost dumb.
And with that, we start the list with Carly Rae Jepsen.
#10 “Call Me Maybe” – Carly Rae Jepsen (2012)
You can’t really be taken seriously as a critic of pop culture if you don’t understand the appeal of Carly Rae Jepsen. That’s the type of decade it’s been.
Everything about this song is catchy but what puts it over the edge from a songwriting perspective is that pause in the phrase, “it’s hard to look right/ at you baby”.
That subtle break, in a really simple sentence, in order to make it insanely infectious is something so simple and yet so profound it appears to be a portal to another dimension.
Like I can understand the sassiness of the phrase “call me, maybe”. Brilliant.
I can conceive of a bouncy pop song that uses violins to create said bounce. I’ve memorized “Drops of Jupiter” once and I can do it again.
What I cannot fathom is how someone thinks to break up “it’s hard to look right…at you baby” in order to make it this catchy. It feels instinctual and hints at a world where deep rivers of sugary-pop music truths flow just under the surface, unable to be seen by us land dwellers, who scramble around in ignorance until we are blessed with the light (and we don’t deserve her) of Carly Rae Jepsen.
#9 “Sugar” – Maroon 5 (2015)
It has a guitar riff that is simply impossible to ignore. One that bounces in and out of the drums like a toddler after so much, sugar.
In that way it is surprisingly representative of the 2010s, a decade where many of the catchiest, and biggest, hits centered around the things musician’s have been centering around since Chuck Berry: guitar, bass, and drums.
Once thought outdated, it appears Max Martin cracked the code on the guitar-in-contemporary-pop-music at the beginning of the decade (more on that later) and passed it down to all his producing predecessors.
#8 “Hotline Bling” (2012) – Drake
There’s that guitar. In the background of a hazy beat, hanging with some girls I never seen before.
“All of The Lights” by Kanye West is arguably better, arguably more telling of the decade, and unquestionably a more impressive song, but it doesn’t have that, “I know when that” thing that Drake does where he hits you with a harsher tone after singing softly for the last 8 bars and it’s really effective at bringing new energy right when you need it – at the chorus – successfully breaking up a song that is possibly just two chords and a drum loop.
I think I sang this song for a year straight.
And if we want to really talk about cultural impact, I find it hard to think of any music video that has generated more memes than this one.
#7 “All About That Bass” – Meghan Trainor (2014)
Is it Amy Winehouse lite? Sure.
Does it make me uncomfortable to listen to a white woman say she’s, “all about that bass, no treble”? Undoubtedly.
Is it almost sacrilegiously ripping off Motown? Not as much as I originally thought.
“All About That Bass” goes back even further to steal ideas from early-60’s/late-50’s Doo Wop artists like Gene Chandler, The Penguins, and even the boogie-woogie-meets-pop stylings of of Fats Domino.
It’s a testament to all the artists who created the template for it, that “All About That Bass” is allowed to be so shamelessly catchy.
#6 “Want To Want Me” – Jason Derulo (2015)
It has everything this decade loves in it’s best pop: big synths, propellant drums, and a high-pitched male singing love things.
More importantly, there is now another song I can think of when I hear the phrase “want to want me” than the god-awful Cheap Trick passive-aggressive anthem “I Want You To Want Me”.
This “Want To Want Me” is pop-music lyricism at its best: a man is physically warm and emotionally lonely so we follow him on his cross-town trek from his bed to the bed of his lover.
“There is nothing I wouldn’t do, just to get up next to you” which I guess if you’re Jason Derulo, means taking a taxi to your place. That’s a lot to ask of Jason Derulo, the man has options.
Also, Chicka-choo-chicka-choo doesn’t come until 2:53 (3:11 in the video) and it’s the best part.
#5 “California Gurls” – Katy Perry (2010)
The chorus is what takes this to another level. Particularly the bouncy guitar in the background. That’s the Max Martin/Dr. Luke trick I was talking about earlier.
Notice how a faint, rhythmic guitar part drops in with the chorus drums and takes everything up a notch. That’s the pop feeling you can’t get enough of in songs like this.
While “California Gurls” was released at the beginning of the decade, and couldn’t foresee the “splintering of the entire musical universe” that the 2010s have become, it still sounds current today, which is saying a lot in a genre that treats each year as its own generation.
Also, “California Gurls” is the exact same song as another contender for this list, “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha. Here’s a mash-up of the two, both products of Dr.Luke.
#4 “Sunflower” – Post Malone, Swae Lee (2018)
The rare song that is as equally beautiful and popular as the movie whose soundtrack spawned it, in this case, Spiderman: Into The Spider-verse.
Possibly the most melancholic song on this list, the earworm runs deep with “Sunflower” and brings us back to a time when Post Malone was just a white Allen Iverson, making us actually feel sad for a millionaire because he never won a ring for playing basketball.
It’s a testament to Swae Lee and Malone, that this much emotion can come through the auto-tune, and a direct rebuke (among one million others), of the argument that machines-as-instruments are somehow lessening music’s emotional impact.
#3 “Bad Guy” – Billie Eilish
From Euphoria to every other song on the Hot 100 trying out-nihilist the next, edgy teens trying hard to show you how little they’re trying are here to stay and we’re all just going to have to deal with it.
Standing atop the piles of heavily medicated bodies at a party scene created from your parents’ worst nightmares, is Billie Eillish and a bass guitar. They are dancing in clothes you’ve never seen before and suddenly you’re dancing too. You don’t know why, but it’s kind of an angry, “Seven Nation Army”, dance that you find refreshing. Your own excitement concerns you.
Do not fight it, edgy teens are here to stay.
#2 “Shake It Off” – Taylor Swift (2014)
It’s because of “Shake It Off” that making fun of Taylor Swift became basic.
The reigning queen of basic transformed the world, our hearts, and our perception of her with the catchiest saxophone part of all-time.
The drums are ridiculous, the bassline is undeniable, and even Taylor’s spoken word breakdown couldn’t make us resist shaking it, all of it, off, anytime it played in the background at Piggly Wiggly.
#1 “Can’t Feel My Face” – The Weeknd (2015)
If there is a voice of this generation it’s The Weeknd.
The 2010s wouldn’t be the 2010s we know without House of Balloons.
The drugged out, detached lyrics over a nonchalant-but-actually-trying vocal performance swimming through synths with the reverb of the systine chapel is everything this decade never knew it would become.
In the 2010s, it just so happened that the most important voice of our time also made the best music, and it all came together on “Can’t Feel My Face”.
The poet laureate of getting, and remaining, faded, in one of those after-the-fact-obvious ideas, met up with the producer Max Martin whose drums would cut like a razor through piles of lyrical Scarface powder, giving us all the life we needed to get through the Trump administration (ok, that’s a stretch).
For all the cancelling (rightfully) being done, it is more clear than ever that Michael Jackson never really left the charts.
His music is still on top at the end of the 21st century’s second decade.