The 54 Best Songs of 2019

Jon Pareles’s List | Jon Caramanica’s List

JON PARELES

The Best Songs of 2019

1. Lizzo, ‘Cuz I Love You’

Going way, way over the top, Lizzo’s knowing but wholehearted take on an old-fashioned, orchestral soul ballad tosses around profanities as she belts it to the rafters.

2. FKA twigs, ‘Cellophane’

A few tolling piano notes open a world of loneliness, cavernous and barren, around FKA twigs’ voice as she copes with self-doubt, jealousy and aching need.

3. Burna Boy, ‘Anybody’

The calm, husky tone and understated beats of Burna Boy, from Nigeria, belie a determination to unite Africa and its diaspora. This track from his 2019 album, “African Giant,” is both insinuating and ambitious.

4. Tame Impala, ‘It Might Be Time’

Carried by pulsing keyboards and a bashing beat, Kevin Parker — the one-man studio band Tame Impala — confronts all the misgivings of being a grown-up still making pop music.

5. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, ‘Bright Horses’

From the album “Ghosteen,” Nick Cave’s magnificently sustained reverie on grief, family and eternity, comes this billowing waltz, a mythic vision that falls to earth and finds another way to ascend.

6. Angel Olsen, ‘Lark’

Crescendos rise like tidal waves in this retro, string-laden torch song that carries girl-group drama to an operatic peak.

7. Joe Henry, ‘The Fact of Love’

A meditative, mysterious song about time, transformation and connection, fervently sung over folky acoustic guitars.

8. Khalid, ‘Talk’

Khalid’s approach couldn’t be more sensitive — “Can’t we just talk/Figure out where we’re going?” — as synthesizer chords tiptoe forward ever so tentatively, even as the tryst proceeds.

9. Clairo, ‘Bags’

In a whispery, bedroom-sized reduction of grungy indie rock, Clairo ponders whether physical attraction will outweigh a lovers’ quarrel, striving to maintain her deadpan as feelings surge.

10. Angelica Garcia, ‘Jícama’

A Mexican-American born in Los Angeles, Angelica Garcia proclaims her bicultural heritage — “wearing my roots and flying this flag” — over a snowballing, polyrhythmic buildup that melds Mexican rhythms and electronic savvy.

11. Rachid Taha, ‘Je Suis Africain’

The perpetually rebellious Algerian songwriter Rachid Taha left behind an album in progress when he died in 2018. Its title song, “Je Suis Africain,” praises an African heritage that extends worldwide, and backs it up with a Pan-African groove fusing elements from Congo, Senegal, Algeria and beyond.

12. Bruce Hornsby featuring yMusic, ‘Voyager One’

Bruce Hornsby melds chamber music, jazz, Minimalism and a folksy hoedown with some science-based metaphors to offer advice and warnings for the future of humanity. Cosmic enough?

13. Baby Rose, ‘All to Myself’

Soul music’s gospel foundations sustain Baby Rose’s strikingly deep, tearful voice as she faces a modern quandary: Should she drunk-dial her ex?

14. Nella, ‘Voy’

A Venezuelan singer who moved to the United States and attended Berklee College of Music, Nella won the 2019 Latin Grammy for best new artist. She forged a trans-Atlantic musical partnership with Javier Limón, a Spanish producer and songwriter who brought out her affinity for flamenco and wrote “Voy” (“I Go”), a lean, lilting song about picking up and moving into the unknown.

15. Adia Victoria, ‘Different Kind of Love’

Rockabilly meets Radiohead, with a backbeat below and a canopy of feedback above Adia Victoria’s voice, in “A Different Kind of Love.” It’s a checklist of failed romances from a songwriter pushing Americana toward sonic experimentation.

16. Leonard Cohen, ‘Happens to the Heart’

This burnished posthumous production is a worthy addition to Cohen’s catalog: a contemplation on art, love and faith.

17. Black Keys, ‘Breaking Down’

There are psychological nuances behind the Black Keys’ neo-vintage rock. “Breaking Down,” with its electric sitar and distorted lead guitar, plunges tersely into darker moments.

18. Zsela, ‘Noise’

Zsela Thompson’s debut single, a somber ballad, introduced her suspended-time phrasing, the melancholy comforts of her lustrous alto voice and lyrics that find a spiritual overlay for the ambiguities of a breakup.

19. Vagabon, ‘Water Me Down’

Vagabon — the Cameroonian-American songwriter Laetitia Tamko — strives to set boundaries in “Water Me Down,” stepping back from a clingy relationship while a muffled four-on-the-floor beat and a cheerfully piping synthesizer line suggest she’s already regained her equilibrium.

20. Camila Cabello, ‘Liar’

“Liar,” a lighthearted plaint about the power of lust, riffles quickly through style after style — salsa, reggaeton, flamenco, ska, ballad — working nimbly and globally to hold elusive the pop attention span.

21. GoldLink featuring Maleek Berry and Bibi Bourelly, ‘Zulu Screams’

A supremely catchy international collaboration — the rapper GoldLink from Washington, the producer Maleek Berry from London (with Nigerian roots), the singer Bibi Bourelly from Germany (whose parents are Moroccan and Haitian-American, singing in Zulu) — rides an unstoppable groove, with Berry’s sly refrain: “You can’t catch me no more on the cellular.”

22. Blake Shelton, ‘God’s Country’

Church bells toll, guitars pick modal patterns and gothic drama builds as Blake Shelton links rural piety and endless, thankless farm work, in a song as grim as it is proud.

23. Oumar Konate, ‘Koima Djiney’

The wah-wah pedal gets a serious workout in this invocation to rain deities from the Malian guitarist and singer Oumar Konate, revving up a twisty, modal, six-beat groove into psychedelic frenzy.

24. Jpegmafia, ‘Jesus Forgive Me, I Am a Thot’

A bristling density — of sounds, styles, ideas, implications — unites the untamed production and rapping of Jpegmafia. This track, from the album “All My Heroes Are Cornballs” crams together prayer and raunch over a slow groove that’s upended again and again.

25. Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, ‘Old Town Road (Remix)’

The song itself, going viral since 2018, could have come and gone as a novelty ditty. But as its popularity spread and spread, the discussions it stimulated — about who’s country and what’s American — have been deep and welcome.

[See the critics’ lists of the best albums of 2019.]

JON CARAMANICA

The Best Songs of 2019

1. Pop Smoke, ‘Welcome to the Party’

A sneer grows in Brooklyn.

2. NLE Choppa, ‘Shotta Flow’

One sudden burst of bubbly mayhem after the next.

3. Sech featuring Darell, ‘Otro Trago’
Sech featuring Ozuna, ‘Si Te Vas’

No one did romantic plaint this year like the Panamanian singer Sech.

4. A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, ‘Look Back at It’

Love in the time of hollering.

5. Ava Max, ‘Sweet but Psycho’

Theatrical warnings about someone too true to be good.

6. Teejayx6, ‘Dark Web’
Kasher Quon featuring Teejayx6, ‘Dynamic Duo’

The state of rap’s tomorrow: offhandedly delivered, mundanely detailed, incidentally rhyming,

7. Drake featuring Rick Ross, ‘Money in the Grave’

Primo resentful Drake meets primo unbothered Ross.

8. Natanael Cano, ‘El Drip’
Fuerza Regida and Legado 7, ‘Cupcake Quemando’

Mexican corridos injected with new swagger.

9. Ashley O, ‘On a Roll’

A promising glimpse of our robot future.

10. Megan Thee Stallion featuring DaBaby, ‘Cash ___’
Gucci Mane featuring Megan Thee Stallion, ‘Big Booty’

Raunch’s refreshing return.

11. DaBaby, ‘Suge’

Rap’s strongest whack-a-mole player at his top speed.

12. Miranda Lambert, ‘Locomotive’

Just let Miranda rock, please.

13. Calboy, ‘Envy Me’

A distressing and infectious slab of sing-rap anxiety.

14. Billie Eilish, ‘Bury a Friend’

The mildly unsettling Billie song that’s better than the other mildly unsettling Billie song.

15. Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, ‘Old Town Road (Remix)’
Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, Young Thug and Mason Ramsey, ‘Old Town Road (Remix)’

It may or may not have been meaningful, but it certainly lasted a long time.

16. Prettymuch featuring Lil Tjay, ‘Lying’

The most fun you can extract from a tense and resentful breakup.

17. Post Malone, ‘Wow.’

But really only the viral dance version.

18. Ellie Goulding featuring Juice WRLD, ‘Hate Me’
Juice WRLD featuring YoungBoy Never Broke Again, ‘Bandit’

He really could do it all.

19. Meek Mill, ‘Funk Flex #Freestyle118’

Rude, in the best way.

20. MC Magic featuring Cuco and Lil Rob, ‘Search’

An unerringly sweet love song that bridges genres and dispositions.

21. girl in red, ‘Bad Idea!’

Howls of ecstasy, howls of regret.

22. Luke Combs, ‘Beer Never Broke My Heart’

The return of ’90s power country.

23. Rosalía and J Balvin featuring El Guincho, ‘Con Altura’

A penetratingly simple song from one of this decade’s most complex artists.

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