It’s hard to remember any self-made star having such a swift and well-deserved rise to the top as Rosalía, who already commands outsized influence given her relatively brief career to date (see: Camila Cabello’s second album). This comes out as a wry, poetic laundry list from Adrianne Lenker: “Not a ruse / Not heat / Not the fire lapping up the creek / Not food / That you eat.” The matter-bending guitar solo has the ragged glory of Neil Young’s finest. In a world besieged by lies, we can no longer say what we are, only what we’re not. Votes from our critics were split across six different songs, but edging out in front was Not, a masterpiece of indie rock with a savage truth at its heart. ![]() With two albums in 2019 stuffed full of instantly classic songs – Forgotten Eyes, Cattails, Shoulders, Orange – Brooklyn’s Big Thief are the band of the year. Dave confronts one ill after another like he can scarcely believe his own words: colonialism, social mobility, media sensationalism … but ultimately, there’s such pride as he considers his hair, his history, his skin. Unlike the three tracks from his album Psychodrama that reached the Top 10, Black scraped the Top 40, and – being a bleak, jaded treatise on contemporary racism – it stuck out like a sore thumb amid the poppy stuff on daytime Radio 1. Photograph: Anthony Harvey/Rex/Shutterstock 13 Dave – Black “The rules are kinda different when you’re baddin’ up the game,” indeed. Nah: the twitchy, tantalising Vossi Bop was a raw reminder of his charisma, the way he kisses words like the pope anointing a baby (“gyal say I’m bougie”) and how pretenders wither to dust in his gaze. ![]() With a Glastonbury headline slot on the horizon and a crown to maintain, you’d be forgiven for thinking Stormzy would return with some kind of weighty, state-of-the-nation opus. Elegant and valedictory, it’s a masterpiece of west coast songwriting classicism: “I guess I’m signing off after all,” she gasps, and a rich, rusty guitar solo soars out of the gate, languid and carefree as a skateboarder sailing along the boardwalk. On The Greatest, Lana Del Rey watches those squandered moments slip away on the breeze as news of missile attacks, forest fires and Kanye West darkens the horizon. Those rare moments of reprieve aren’t the banner memories of mental supercuts, but fleeting sensations you don’t miss until they’re gone. Having the freedom not to care is harder to come by for some people than others – and harder to come by at all these days. No street corner was left unmolested by the words “Yo, it’s the hyperman set!” blasting from a hatchback’s open windows. This shamelessly nostalgic UK garage track dominated the summer, AJ toasting like a club MC being heckled with champagne. Luckily, he had Ladbroke Grove up his sleeve. Photograph: Dennis Leupold 16 AJ Tracey – Ladbroke GroveĪJ Tracey might have been a touch worried about his mainstream prospects: the first single from his album only reached No 18 in the charts, and he was upstaged on one of his biggest tracks to date, Thiago Silva, by the bucket-hatted Alex going viral with AJ’s verse on stage with Dave at Glastonbury. The former Fifth Harmony member swiftly establishes her own brand of excellence, and demands that lovers and fans alike recognise her game. In the video, her athletic choreography and throwback bellybutton piercing evoke the drilled spectacles of millennium-era Britney and Beyoncé. Motivation is the pop equivalent of an Olympics-winning gymnastics routine: Normani serves take-it-or-leave-it cool, effortless vocal workouts and nonchalant cheerleader authority on the Ariana Grande co-write. Even as Lykke Li catalogues the torments doled out by her would-be lover, the distant steel pan chime, sparkling disco chorus and sugar-spun melodies maintain the glimmering mirage of possibility. It’s that perverse optimism that Mark Ronson captures in Late Night Feelings. ![]() ![]() Self-destructive behaviour wouldn’t be so common if there were no thrill involved: the fantasy that your desires might pan out after all, even though you know there’s not a hope in hell. BBT 18 Mark Ronson – Late Night Feelings (feat Lykke Li) Her incitement to cunnilingus is admirably casual, but Missy Elliott steals the show with her menagerie of purrs and trills. “I’m a thick bitch, I need tempo.” Sure enough, this is a sterner, clubbier track than her other big 2019 hits Juice and Truth Hurts (the latter not eligible for this list as it first came out in 2017). Lizzo made her name this year with her powerfully positive affirmations of selfhood, but Tempo tees off in much snarkier style: “Slow songs, they for skinny hoes,” she declares. Photograph: Sarah Piantadosi 19 Lizzo – Tempo (feat Missy Elliott)
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