List: Top 15 Best Songs of 2011

WOW this was a GREAT year for music. It was GREAT. Basically every favorite band that is still together that I have released a record in 2011. Some of the records were fantastic (thanks, Drake) and some of the records were disappointing (I had high hopes, Slow Club), but all in all, it was a great year to listen to music.

Picking just 15 tracks was a huge pain. My playlist of "2011 Contenders" has 423 tracks on it. I'm serious. If you want to hear that list, by the way, you can come over to my house and we can make friendship bracelets together.

Here, though, is the final tally. This is some good shit, right here. If a few of the tracks seem obvious to you, that's because THEY ARE, because I'm not going to not pick a song that was fucking awesome just because they played that shit out on the radio. Jeez.

Because I don't have the legal rights, really, to upload all of these songs for your personal download onto my website, the links are to YouTube videos, for the most part. So. If you would like a mix CD with all 15 of these delightful tracks, I'll mail one to you! Here's the catch: you must also mail me a mix CD with YOUR favorite 15 tracks of 2011. That's the deal. A CD for a CD makes the whole world musically-enlightened. So if you're interested in this kind of transaction, go ahead and click on that "contact" button over there and let me know.

Here we go.

15. Hindi Zahra - Don't Forget: I heard an interview with Hindi Zahra on the New York Times Popcast and let me just say this: she has a really sexy accent. That is the first reason I love her. The second is that she's French-Moroccan and sometimes things get lost in the translation, which is something I really love a lot (let's talk for three hours about Swedish pop, OK?). This song is the most beautiful thing I've heard in years for its simplicity, its masterful songwriting, and its painstakingly stark execution. You will stop breathing when you listen to it.

14. M83 - Midnight City: I first heard this song with everyone else when Midnight City dropped and the entire collective of music critics in the world had one, giant simultaneous erection. Then I heard it the next day in a coffee shop, and immediately thought, "Hey. I INTIMATELY know that song. What song is that?" It had the effect of a particularly stirring movie score; something that has imprint on you permanently and perfectly after just one listen. In many ways, this may be the perfect song. You could listen to it anywhere and with anyone, and it will belong. It's like that friend that everyone is following on Twitter, but no one actually ever gets to hang out with. But they want to. They desperately want to.

13. Fleet Foxes - Battery Kinzie: Helplessness Blues was one of those records I listened to privately in my room while I was getting ready for work. The sun kind of cracked open and filled my room with these warm slices on the hardwood floor, and this was the soundtrack to that in every way. "Battery Kinzie" is my favorite because it's something you can stomp to, and in that way I think it translates nicely from that whispering, silent morning language to the bearded, red-wine-and-chocolates after dinner language that emerges when you're around a bunch of twenty-somethings in the south.

12. Los Campesinos! - By Your Hand: I'll agree with most people who felt disappointed by Los Campesinos!'s 2011 effort, but I'm grateful they made an effort at all. This is one of the most wonderfully erratic bands in the world, and a new release is a rare, blissfully honest glimpse into a weird party you weren't invited to (and would you have gone if you WERE invited?). This track, though, is the exception to the sort of boring, over-produced rule of the album. Gareth Campesinos shines here as we all desperately want him to: crazy as fuck, and he's gonna dance 'til it goes away.

11. Kanye West and Jay-Z - Otis: First of all, I'll say right out that I liked this collaboration. I didn't find it disappointing at all. So just... deal with that. Second, these are the two people who are most capable of using (and not abusing) an Otis Redding sample. I love soul samples in hip-hop music as a general rule, so this one pleased me. Finally, this song is short, sweet, pretty unpretentious (for a Kanye/ Jay-Z cut), and extremely listenable. Essentially, this is candy. And I like when that is on the radio.

10. Jill Scott Feat. Doug E. Fresh - All Cried Out: THANK YOU, UNIVERSE. This song was exactly what broken-up-with me needed. EXACTLY. When I said, "Hey World, can I please please have a song that will help me get over my ex?" The world said, "Here you go, Sophie, here is Jill Scott." And that was the moment I believed in magic, because this track is fresh and simple and not over-produced at all. It is the clean-cut kind of thing that you need when you are a month out of a long-term relationship. On top of that, Jill Scott is vocally at her best here. Perhaps most exciting of all, though, is that Doug E. Fresh does the best beat boxing I have maybe EVER HEARD. There aren't even any instruments on this cut until 1:25 into it, and it doesn't for even a SECOND feel like something an a cappella group at your college could have ever performed, ever. (Oh yeah, and when the instrument comes in, it's a '20s era, brite-as-fuck, upright jazz piano. Was this song actually written explicitly to please me?)

9. Atlas Sound - Angel Is Broken: I love the album Parallax like a family member. I think this is one of those precious few albums that you need to just sit with and listen to from beginning to end without interruption to experience its full effect, though, which is why I think I was initially confused by the hype around Atlas Sound this year. I felt particularly boggled by the loads blown over the album's single, "Mona Lisa." Which is fine. But honestly, it can't stand on its own two feet the way that "Angel Is Broken" can, which moves around in a bluesier (is that a word?) way, making it more accessible. Still, to really get this album, sit down with it in the dark for an hour. You'll get it, trust me.

8. Kendrick Lamar - A.D.H.D.: This is wonderfully impossible to get out of your head. It's one of those very unique rap songs that combines really extraordinary production with solid rapping. The message here is biting and rich, if veiled: "Man, no wonder our lives is caught up/ In the daily superstition/ That the word is bout to end/ Who gives a f-ck? We never do listen." It's a fascinating generational piece, and it asks a lot more questions than it answers. Of course, this track is drowning in drug references. But there's something more happening here that makes this a very powerful track.

7. tUnE-yArDs - Powa: tUnE-yArDs' WHOKILL was the soundtrack of my summer; I played it loud in my bedroom with the front door swung open and the air conditioner clacking. I danced around alone every androgynous, genius track like I had just discovered my feet. That's the overall effect of the album, and "Powa" is the stand-out here, ballsy and psychedelic, with a crash-landing rhythm that gives you Elvis-hips. This is the stuff of legends.

6. St. Vincent - Cruel: As someone who secretly majored in poetry-writing (really), I have a huge fetish for dichotomous juxtapositions. It's hard for me to admit, for example, how much I like the "Stuck In The Middle With You" scene from Resevoir Dogs. But I like it. A lot. St. Vincent plays with this trick a lot, and has dressed it up and down on her last two studio releases. While it's been done before, it's never been done with the brightness and brilliance of St. Vincent, and "Cruel" is the epitome of sweet-and-sour songwriting. This song haunts you when you sleep. It gets under your skin in all the best ways.

5. Drake - Headlines: I have no problem with how much Drake lets us in. I know so much about this guy's failed relationships and daddy issues that I feel like he was in my sophomore year poetry class. And I like it! I find it refreshing, actually. Radio rappers like to rap mostly about drugs and guns and sex, and so I like to hear Drake ponder his rise to the top. Needless to say, he's a really good rapper. Maybe this is rap for the formerly-emo black-haired set. But that's totally me. And isn't it us all?

4. Beyonce - Countdown: Is this a perfect song? This may be a perfect song. This is the song that hits you right in the heart THE FIRST TIME YOU HEAR IT. You hear it, and you look up from whatever the fuck you were doing, and you realize your life is different now that you've heard it. And every time you hear it after that, you're trying to choreograph a better dance to it. But you're not going to choreograph anything that even comes close to the video Beyonce put together for it, so don't even try. I hate Beyonce. I just hate how good she is at being Beyonce. It's truly irritating. Fuck Beyonce.

3. Youth Lagoon - July: I'm in LOVE with Youth Lagoon, a.k.a. Trevor Powers, who apparently just sits in his bedroom and makes this gauzey, immensely positive, sugar-coated shoegazer pop music all day. I would marry him in one minute. Every single song he's put out just does it for me on so many levels. This one, for example, builds PERFECTLY; improving exponentially with every level. The only song I can compare it to that has ever worked for me in any way even remotely similar is the ideal "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl" by Broken Social Scene. Do you remember how you felt when you first heard that song? That's how I feel, like, every time I listen to Youth Lagoon. This is music that makes me love music. This is music that gets me out of bed in the morning.

2. Widowspeak - Gun Shy: This quiet little single came out of left field and stole my heart. It sounds like the theme song to a hopelessly glamorous forties-era detective Western movie. Is that even a thing? That's what this sounds like. The lead singer and songwriter Molly Hamilton is perfectly restrained in everything she does; she constantly sounds like a girl wrapped up in Band-Aids, which I find beautiful and sad. I want this to play at my funeral, please. Take note.

1. Lana Del Rey - Video Games: I don't get where Lana Del Rey came from. Technically, she used to be another musician named Elizabeth Grant. When she was Elizabeth Grant, everyone will be fast to tell you, she did not make very good music. But then she took on this Nancy Sinatra-esque '60s persona and suddenly she creates music that is intensely fresh, sad, poppy, strange, and brutal. This is unquestionably her best song (the others are loopier and dancier, but still interesting). Lyrically, it makes you dizzy. Musically, it brings you to your knees. When I first heard this song, I couldn't listen to anything else for an entire week. That's the mark of the song-of-the-year if I ever heard one. I'm falling over waiting for something more than an EP from her.