The 100 Best Songs of 2021 - Pitchfork
The 100 Best Songs of 2021
In another trying year, many of the best songs—from "Like I Used To" to "Pick Up Your Feelings" to "Hard Drive" to "Good Days"—were about picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and trying again. These tracks gave us a shoulder to cry on, but also, crucially, a kick in the pants when we needed it most. They were the soundtrack to our 2021, and we have a feeling we'll keep turning to them in better times yet to come. These are the 100 best songs of the year.
Listen to selections from this list on our Spotify playlist and Apple Music playlist.
Check out all of Pitchfork's 2021 wrap-up coverage here.
Capitol
Halsey: "I am not a woman, I'm a god"
More than any other track on Halsey's career-best LP If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power, "I am not a woman, I'm a god" embodies the bitter resignation of the album's title: detachment as a mask for self-loathing. Taking the come-closer-go-away themes of previous songs like "Alone" and turning them post-apocalyptic, Halsey likens themself to a distant sort of god, an alt-pop Doctor Manhattan surveying their emotional wasteland of botched connections and might-have-been selves and finding nothing savable. Producers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross deliver their late-career coldest: an implacable sequence line, a metronomic beat, and a synth riff that prickles like a crown of thorns. Halsey vocalizes like they're trying to outrun the thing they're singing about, until the final chorus: a desperate belt with an abrupt end, the sounds their last few remaining feelings make before they're soldered over. –Katherine St. Asaph
Listen: Halsey, "I am not a woman, I'm a god"
XL
Smerz: "Believer"
Smerz, the electronic project of Norwegian songwriters Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg, released its debut full-length, Believer, early this year. The album's cold, creeping title track is among the duo's finest work: The song teeters on jagged synths and rattling polyrhythms, while strings surge from behind at gale force. Stoltenberg's voice is small and slightly processed, a mechanical purr that somehow feels both vulnerable and detached. Her clipped dispatches on love are pragmatic and icy, but beguiling enough to lure you through each disorienting curve. –Madison Bloom
Listen: Smerz, "Believer"
Fire Talk
Mandy, Indiana: "Bottle Episode"
"Bottle Episode" is repetition weaponized. The single by the Manchester-based Mandy, Indiana marches brusquely from pocket to pocket, its pacing urgent, its drums military. But it's Valentine Caulfield's lyrics that form the most compelling loops—the ones that upend the song's tone. Each short verse ends with a single repeating line; some, when read straight, would be too grim to maintain the song's relentless groove ("Sous le feu et sous les balles/Les hommes dansent quasiment," roughly translated: "As the bullets hit them/The men dance, almost"). Yet Caulfield infuses them with a perverse playfulness, allowing you to imagine, against your better judgment, how that choreography might look. –Paul A. Thompson
Listen: Mandy, Indiana, "Bottle Episode"
Dirty Hit
beabadoobee: "Last Day on Earth"
Bea Kristi wrote "Last Day on Earth" soon after COVID-19 lockdowns began by imagining how she would've spent her last "normal" day. It sounds like a rom-com writing prompt, with music to match: irresistible guitar-pop jangle, a giddy wordless hook, soft backing vocals from the 1975's Matty Healy. But the song's sweet self-referentiality takes it someplace unexpected. Instead of looking for love or throwing a rager, Bea wanders around her house naked and alone, obsessing over a song that's "so fucking sick" even as she's too drunk to finish the lyrics. That's where the hook comes in: When you have a golden riff and a perfect melody, there's nothing wrong with singing shoop-do-badoo and calling it a day. –Jamieson Cox
Listen: beabadoobee, "Last Day on Earth"
UMG
Kay Flock: "Being Honest"
Bronx teenager Kay Flock has the voice of a much older man, suitable for projecting menace and hinting at relentless pain. It's reminiscent of G Herbo, when the Chicago rapper was pioneering drill nearly a decade ago. Herbo solidified this connection by showing up on a remix of "Being Honest," but it's the original, solo version of the track that gives Kay Flock the most space to express his tormented worldview. The song's verses are stark, filled with loneliness and missed calls and death, all atop a sample of the late XXXTentacion's "changes" made to sound as if it were an unearthed pop relic from the '60s. In a year when New York's mutation of drill seemed to be stagnating, Kay Flock injected it with new life. –Paul A. Thompson
Listen: Kay Flock, "Being Honest"
LuckyMe
Doss: "Look"
A girl walks home alone at night: There are horror films written about the sheer anxiety that scenario evokes. But on her effervescent single "Look," Doss subverts the threat. Defiant in her confident solitude, she dares us to, well, look. "You see me, on my own," she sings in a robotic register, before a rubbery, slightly sinister synth counters. "Look" is grimy and grotesque, with wobbly basslines and EDM-style drops. Like a rave in a funhouse mirror, its rhythms are as disorienting as they are danceable. Her lyrics share that shifting perspective, transferring power between the observer and the observed. "I can do it on my own," she insists, over and over again. By the end, it's impossible to tell if the dip in her voice is out of fear or excitement, but either way, we're transfixed. –Arielle Gordon
Listen: Doss, "Look"
Kemosabe / RCA
Doja Cat: "Get Into It (Yuh)"
The best Doja Cat singles work their way into your brain, and then, when you least expect it, involuntarily funnel back out through your vocal cords. On "Get Into It (Yuh)," it's the way she bends her voice on the hook, going from a croaky whisper to a sweet-sounding chant. Then there's the light, dreamy melody that's perfect to whistle along to. The only problem is, when you sing it back to yourself, it won't sound nearly as good. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen: Doja Cat, "Get Into It (Yuh)"
New York Lab
Mavi: "Time Travel"
Mavi's 2019 record Let the Sun Talk was a spiritual journey of self-discovery and Black liberation that established the North Carolina artist as a leader of rap's underground vanguard. Two years later, he sounds hungrier than ever, suffering no fools. On "Time Travel," he narrates the battle between his ego and insecurities. "Often I be embarrassed over how brazen I be," he raps over shimmering keys, "but it beats bein' embarrassed over how lazy they be." For nearly four minutes, he breathlessly runs through references both Biblical and mythological in between nods to Nickelodeon cartoons and his beloved hometown Charlotte Hornets, painting a self portrait that feels both superhuman and achingly relatable. –Brandon Callender
Listen: Mavi, "Time Travel"
Sacred Bones
SPELLLING: "Little Deer"
Bay Area art-pop sorcerer Tia Cabral of SPELLLING reintroduced herself with "Little Deer," the surging baroque opener of her fantastical third album The Turning Wheel. Evoking the audacious spirits of forebears like Minnie Riperton and Kate Bush, it is a fable-like tale of death and rebirth, of the never-quite-finished process of being a person. Joined by over a dozen musicians—brass, strings, woodwinds, conga, a choir—Cabral brings pop formalism and the questing spirit of '70s soul orchestration into SPELLLING's world, making a majestic entry into her sharpest album yet. –Jenn Pelly
Listen: SPELLLING, "Little Deer"
Artium
Snoh Aalegra: "We Don't Have to Talk About It"
Here's an R&B ballad for the ghosted, by the ghosted. Snoh Aalegra, whose elegant vocals and tight ponytail have inspired enough comparisons to Sade to cause a minor Twitter controversy, is trying to navigate the frustrations of a one-sided relationship. She wants to respect her partner's silence even as she's haunted by what's been left unsaid. Atop roomy production that mirrors the empty space she's wading through, Aalegra sounds both poised and vulnerable—straight-faced with a single tear running down. She can't force him to talk about what's wrong. But he can't stop her from singing about it, either. –Ryan Dombal
Listen: Snoh Aalegra, "We Don't Have to Talk About It"
Sargent House
The Armed: "All Futures"
"All Futures" introduced ULTRAPOP as the Armed's fourth album, and also as a one-band genre: a deliberate attempt to fashion post-hardcore's most extremist tendencies into something thrillingly accessible. In a live-performance video that has become the song's definitive version, the band flexed the results of the absurd nutrition and exercise regimen they'd followed for the previous year, a sort of conceptual stunt aimed at visually matching the maxed-out heroism of the music. Absolutely ripped, dwarfing their instruments, they pummel out massive hooks amid organized chaos. These facets are inseparable for the Armed, a band that has dedicated its confounding existence to highbrow myth-making on one hand, and on the other, shit that immediately sounds and looks fucking awesome. –Ian Cohen
Listen: The Armed, "All Futures"
Mad Decent
Danny L Harle: "Boing Beat"
MC Boing, the pitched-up voice on Danny L Harle's post-trance rave-up "Boing Beat," is a blobby blue cartoon character that looks like a cross between Crazy Frog and a character from a Red Bull commercial. Such absurd imagery suits the song's delirious swirl of internet-addled Eurodance refractions and pitched-up sugar-rush rapping, which is credited to the animated avatar. The euphoric, otherworldly track arrived in January, while clubs across the world were still shuttered and the long nights out that "never, never, never end" were still a distant dream. Though dancefloors have filled back up, the music's yearning is still palpable—few songs better capture the feeling of desperately straining for an ecstatic experience that's just out of reach. –Colin Joyce
Listen: Danny L Harle, "Boing Beat"
R&R / Warner
Dijon: "Many Times"
If "Many Times" is a song about needing space, Dijon manages to use every available inch. It unfolds in the moments after a breakup, leaving the R&B-inflected singer-songwriter grasping at straws, his multi-tracked vocals growing progressively more agitated across two verses. A series of structural pivots—claustrophobic percussion giving way to a roomier chorus—mirror the narrative's emotional trajectory, with a lively piano outro lending a glimmer of hope. –Pete Tosiello
Listen: Dijon, "Many Times"
XL
Joy Orbison: "better" [ft. Léa Sen]
Presented as a mixtape, Joy Orbison's long-awaited debut full-length, Still Slipping Vol. 1, is meant to be consumed as a complete, luscious whole, but album highlight "better" beautifully encapsulates the UK producer's timeless brand of post-dubstep street soul. Dreamily drifting along the edge of the dancefloor, the track rests atop a bed of plush deep house that recalls the pillow-soft sounds of Larry Heard; its silky, dimly lit groove centers the R&B-infused vocals of fellow Londoner Léa Sen, who delivers a heart-twisting tale of late-night longing. –Shawn Reynaldo
Listen: Joy Orbison, "better" [ft. Léa Sen]
RCA
Mariah the Scientist: "2 You"
The heartbreak Mariah the Scientist sings about in "2 You" is the kind that doesn't fade for years. Against a dreamy mosaic of a cappella fragments, she reminisces about a lover who drifted away, about how the only thing she regrets more than letting this one go was not leaving sooner. "But look at what we made/Sure was beautiful," she sings, voice soaring up from a well of emotions heavy as gravity, a heaping stack of harmonies to tell you how her heart went threadbare. After all this time, she still can't quite explain it: "Whenever they play our song/Don't know why I feel ashamed." –Anna Gaca
Listen: Mariah the Scientist, "2 You"
