Top Songs of 2019
Ninety-eight tracks of 2019, the year-end rotation pull. The year was strong but not catalog-version strong, which is why the cut is just under the round-number hundred. Some years deserve the deluge; 2019 deserved the slight discipline.
Foo Fighters anchor the legacy-rock rotation across the year. The band had been deep into the touring cycle for “Concrete and Gold” and the singles kept rotating through the alt-radio context. Bruno Mars with Cardi B “Finesse” — the Remix — opens because that was the song that effectively established what the year’s pop-radio rotation would be. The Cardi B verse is the structural moment of the track and the song became inescapable from January through May.
Maroon 5 with Cardi B “Girls Like You” — the Cardi B Version — sits in the front quarter. The original album version is on the standard 2019 catalog; the Cardi B Version is what’s on the year-end review because the remix is what actually lived on the radio. The cut had been a constant since the previous summer and was still in heavy rotation in early 2019, which is one of those reminders about how the streaming-era song-decay curve has flattened.
benny blanco with Halsey and Khalid “Eastside” is the slick-pop-radio bridge. The track had been at the top of the rotation since late 2018 and stayed there through the first half of 2019. Halsey was having the best year of her career and the Khalid feature is the kind of post-Frank-Ocean vocal that the year’s R&B rotation kept producing.
Silk City with Dua Lipa, Mark Ronson, and Diplo “Electricity” is the deliberate sequencing into the house-revival pop crossover. The Silk City project was Ronson and Diplo’s collaboration, and “Electricity” was the lead single that effectively predicted the disco-revival peak that would arrive in 2020 with Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia.” The track is here because it was the deep-rotation pull through the spring.
Post Malone “Circles” anchors the back half. The song had dropped in August and was still climbing through year’s end. The placement at the back-half is honest about when the cut actually peaked — late in the year, not at the year’s outset. Marshmello with Bastille “Happier” was the slick-melancholy-pop pull that the year’s afternoon rotation absolutely committed to. The collaboration shouldn’t work and does — Marshmello’s EDM production with Bastille’s alt-pop vocal is the kind of cross-genre cut that the year produced in volume.
Bazzi with Camila Cabello “Beautiful” carries the deliberate-saccharine pop-radio block. The Bazzi catalog had been on rotation since “Mine” the previous year, and the Cabello feature is the cut where Bazzi crossed into the broader audience. Ariana Grande “thank u, next” is the cultural-anchor track of the year. The song effectively rewrote how to construct a confessional pop single — the production is sparse, the vocal carries the whole track, the hook is the kind of phrase that the year’s social-media context absorbed and amplified.
Mid-rotation pulls in the year’s other peaks — Billie Eilish’s full “WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP” album cycle, Lizzo’s “Cuz I Love You” cuts that crossed over from the cult-following catalog into broader rotation, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” complete with the seven-and-a-half-month Billboard Hot 100 record run that the song produced.
The back half leans into the year’s deeper-rotation pulls — Tame Impala’s “Patience” and “Borderline” singles, James Blake’s “Assume Form” tracks, the Mac Miller posthumous album cuts that the year’s deeper rap rotation absolutely committed to. The MF DOOM-Madlib reissue that Stones Throw put out in November was the catalog event of the year and a couple of those cuts made the year-end review because they were on heavy rotation through December.
Ninety-eight tracks. About six hours. The right length for the year-end summary that I’d put on a single Saturday afternoon in late December and let run through the whole day. Built for the friend group who’d lived through the standing-Friday editions with me. The annual ritual that closes the year. Held up because the year held up.
Ninety-eight tracks is the disciplined cut that the year actually deserved. Not the catalog deluge that 2019’s diversity could have justified, not the trimmed best-of that a different year might have warranted. The year as I lived it, in the order the singles accumulated. Built for the friend group who’d lived through the standing-Friday editions with me. The annual ritual that closes the year.
