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Having fun dancing to urgent consumption pop songs is the definition of everything that has not been 2020. In the same way, this year there has also been left over material of this music, which fulfills its function as worthy as any other.
Having fun is essentially not bad, and although not everyone enjoys these kinds of songs, many of them are among the best of the year.
10. BTS: 'Dynamite'
At the end of the 90s the
boy bands
of the United States took over the black pop that Michael Jackson made canon in the 80s and refined and updated it with sometimes wonderful results.
Two decades later, the largest factory of this type of pop that amalgamates R&B, hip hop, funk and dance to the 4/4 rhythm is not in Chicago, nor Houston, nor New York, but in Seoul.
Today's NSYNC are
BTS,
and while K-pop in general is cleaner and cuddly than the toilet paper dog, in a bad way, the perfection of their songs should be recognized as sympathetic, catchy, and celebratory artifacts.
9. Shygirl: 'Freak'
Being a
freak
, someone in the gutter of society, is one of the concepts most exploited this century by music marketing, a phenomenon parallel to the rise of the soloist in front of the group.
The glamor of being different has been exploited by countless singers, from Lady Gaga on down, but none can sound more convincing than Shygirl in this slam dunk by the London artist and her partner, the great producer Sega Bodega.
Dance-pop with an industrial aesthetic, relentless rhythm and dark and sharp texture.
8. Bad Bunny: 'I dog alone'
This is what happens when a musical genre (trap and reggaeton) have a hegemonic artist (Bad Bunny), an artist who is clearly a generational leader, and he changes the rules from world stardom with a song that spreads like a pandemic (around 1 billion
plays
between YouTube and
streaming
platforms
).
A complete paradigm shift with just one song.
That's
Yo perreo sola
, a song that uses perreo as a metaphor and tool for female empowerment, not the other way around.
Bad Bunny
has the power.
7. Megan Thee Stallion: 'Savage (remix)'
"I'm a savage / Elegant, tacky, miserable / Cheeky, temperamental, slut / Acting stupid, yeah what's wrong?"
The verses of the year in US rap were made by
Megan Thee Stallion
, unstoppable star of Houston, the city of Beyoncé, who joined the party in this adaptation of the sensational
Savage
.
The phenomenon on TikTok was the gasoline for a viral song that sticks in the brain like a spoonful of hot honey.
6. Beyoncé: 'Black parade'
Big purposes often cause apoplexy in songs.
They paralyze them, turn them into a big clumsy thing caught up in their ambition.
Beyoncé
, however, set out to make a
big
black pride
song
at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests and came out with this whirlwind of African-American references and messages that sway like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
The protest song is sexy.
5. Bob Dylan: 'Murder most foul'
In a list like this, full of songs of instant pop and probably ephemeral, including this Himalayas of almost 17 minutes produces a perhaps too strong contrast.
But what do you want me to tell you, Bob Dylan is a Nobel Prize winner for Literature and he has made this epic that contains the power of a great book, and that forces what is so old to sit and listen.
It's one of the best songs of the year, period.
4. Rina Wasayama: 'XS'
Japanese-born English singer
Rina Sawayama
has made a canonical electronic pop album full of hooks called, to underline her exotic character,
Sawayama
.
Among the heap of round songs that it treasures, this anthem against consumerism and climate change stands out with R&B harmonies and crazy bursts of electric guitar.
3. Christine and the Queens: 'People, I've Been Sad'
"It is true that, people, I have been sad. / It is true that, people, I am gone. / It is true that, people, I have been losing myself / Losing myself for too long / Only me, me, me, with me / Abandoning things for too long. "
What a great artist is the French singer, dancer and producer Héloïse Letissier, this ambiguous and mysterious girl who uses the alias
Christine & The Queens
to make somewhat theatrical pop songs that define our time.
And in that endeavor he released this melancholic beauty that has grown not only as one of the best songs of the year, but also as one of the most significant.
He is one of the great voices of his generation and here he demonstrates it perfectly.
2. Resident: 'René'
Honesty is a highly overrated virtue in music.
Who cares about the truth?
A song needs a truth, but it is an artistic creation, and therein lies its value.
It is theater.
Life is also theater.
The naturalness does not really exist.
All that makes sense, but not for
René
, the song in which Residente confesses and turns his weakness, his pain, his hesitations and memories and the precise moment in which he broke inside into wonderful art.
Its true.
A song that condenses your deepest concerns into eight minutes of high emotional intensity.
1. Dua Lipa: 'Physical'
What do you think of a song about the rapture we feel when a sexual desire is finally satisfied with a first physical contact?
Future Nostalgia's
second advance single
came out in January, a few weeks before health authorities around the world began recommending isolation and avoiding physical contact.
In a world of hydrogel, plastic and safety distance, a round song about the primal desire to touch the skin and grab the flesh of another person has taken on a special significance.
At 148
beats
per minute, the heart rate during orgasm, this marvel from the British Dua Lipa updates the sound of the early 80s, of synth pop, but also, in the background, of AOR, which was terrible, but that seen in perspective has the charm of innocent music.
An aerobic party song about sex?
More necessary than ever.
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