ISSUE #334
Olivia Rodrigo’s universally acclaimed third album came out the same year the film Obsession made over $300 million dollars at the worldwide box office. This is nothing less than a fact, and the implications are far beyond the scope of this issue; nevertheless, it speaks to a generational changing of the guard, and the universal pattern of emotion and memory for our centennially challenged species.
Olivia and I share a birthday (same with Rihanna, and Kurt Cobain). We’re cusps, so it’s very validating to hear her identify fully and forcefully as Pisces in her album opener “drop dead." If there’s any core truth in the zodiac, it’s just another hook to hang my emotional hat on; it helps me remember, and cross the rickety bridge of age, to give an additional layer of specific identification to the feelings she evokes when she sings.
What else do we share? A love of The Cure. A knowledge of the chord progression in “Everlong.” There’s the collaboration and guidance of her personal Antonoff, Dan Nigro (which is way less creepy, at least, based on what I’ve read so far). I'm a mark for her new songs—I do think she rocks. But I hate nothing more than being swindled and duped, which is the influence of my own generation of elders, the X-ers, those cynical cousins who raised me. Time will tell how I really feel in the end (and eventually, I’ll be so dead anyway).
Well, you won’t find any of her in here, which is no shade to her. There are millions of 2026 songs out there right now, so it’s no insult not to make the top ten. I’m not interested in consensus picks. I’m only interested in what keeps me coming back, over and over.
1. “Badlands” | Kevin Morby
Last week, I rewatched the Girls episodes where Hannah goes to Iowa for the Writer’s Workshop. Iowa City didn’t allow them to film there, which I think was a mistake, but it was good of Dunham to want to, at least. It’s more than most people have in them, even the ones I love.
It’s hard, I get it, to remember the Potato State. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, you know. Most don’t want to consider it at all—how beauty may lie in places they have no desire to see. Who can blame them? The spirit doesn’t know how to open up if it has no example of openness. That’s what Morby makes his albums about; this new one is one of his best.
2. “Cocoa Beach” | Daughn Gibson
And I know that every inch of land is born as good land. From Iowa, that unknowable sea of wind, to Florida’s salty shell and knotted, green hair. Evoking Alex Cameron’s “Miami Memory,” Daughn Gibson floors the reverb pedal on his Leonard Cohen sound and recontextualizes that singular peninsula, singing straight into its mouth.
3. “Target Practice” | My New Band Believe
The British Windmill scene has been filtering Queen’s itty-bitty ditties through Y2K emo for half a decade now—it always hits for me. Whenever these guys go chamber pop, I’m freaking in. Make it prog, fuse it with pop; bring it spite, keep it wry. That’s the way to get under my skin.
4. “Hard Candy” | fakemink
Phonk assembled a body this year, and its name is fakemink. The witch-house ritual complete, London air now tastes like helium and comes bearing gecs.
5. “Eyelash” | Bladee
The prettiest Bladee to date, for my money, “Eyelash” is basically a Postal Service song if Dntel had been mainlining doomscrolls.
6. “Broken By Design” | Basement
Nothing like a band pushing through a history of hiatus to bring me a song like this, which I quite like—that’s what artistry’s all about.
7. “So Mean” | Greg Mendez
Everyone has called the guy with the guitar “the new Elliott Smith” for going on 30 years now—but Mendez is the closest anyone’s ever actually come to reincarnation without pastiche, without caricature.
8. “Hit & Run” | sadie
Lyrically cogent and so utterly touching for the genre.
9. “Take the Form” | of Montreal
I hadn’t listened to them in a long time, but some of my best friends are huge of-Montreal–heads. I’d heard them out about the merits of their country-tinged record, gazed at all their posters on the wall, waited for them to come back to me naturally, like Odysseus—finally, they decided to lift that guitar squeal from Modest Mouse’s pedalboard and slayed me for my wandering eyes.
10. “Running to Pain” | Kelsey Lu
Actually? An unstoppable running song. I know I’m prone to the full-throated pop girlies—blame my mother’s Leona Lewis phase—but I do think this one’s special. So many ingredients, in the wrong hands, could end up with slop, but instead it’s the ultimate gravy.
This year was awesome, of course—the future always is—promised (ripped straight?) as it has been from speculative literature. It's a huge slap to the haters that the best songs of 2025 were artificially generated, ripe and ready to fill the coffers of the First Family. That's life, baby—that's liberty, that's the... the... sorry, my hands don't usually quake like this.
Every song I've heard this year felt like it'd be the last. It's the scorch (praise be its name!)—every drive, I blast my mounted phone with max AC. It's a prayer that keeps it from overheating.
As I listened to the long list of songs for this issue, over the many weeks it took me to get my groove back (jury’s still out), I was surprised at how sad this project was making me. I’d been more than ready to revisit the dull bite of those pandemic memories, obviously, but this emotional hedging made it only more of a shock when I was blindsided by intense anti-nostalgia,
We have entered the arbitrary quarter century, which is fascinating because I’ve lived through it all. Remember: 25 years into the 20th, we had The Great Gatsby and “Rhapsody in Blue.”
The best song of 2024 isn’t on Spotify. It’s called “24/7 Heaven,” Diamond Jubilee’s closer. It comes drenched in strings and draped in blue light, at the end of Cindy Lee’s two-hour album. It’s the epitome of sublime, if you ask me—a sweet and perfect fruit, an apple at first sight.
Technically, halfway through the year is next Monday, July 1st. This is a leap year, after all. They’re the only years where there’s an even split in days; the only times the divide falls at midnight, not noon.
That first song you hear? That’s my #1 song of the year. That’s right—for the first time in Earwyrms history, I have made a best-of playlist from one to ten. Grief demands you do something different, and—like Soderbergh producing the 93rd Academy Awards—only time will tell if we fell for seductive folly or landed on love’s new paradigm.
A collection of the best songs from these first several months, featuring Gia Margaret, Jessy Lanza, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, JPEGMAFIA, Danny Brown, Wednesday, ANOHNI and the Johnsons, Jess Williamson, and more.
The trouble with writing about music every week is you don’t actually end up knowing that much more about music. Quite less, in fact. The time, the work, the attempted balance leads to short cuts, and I become more drawn to the oldies and goodies instead of pressing play on something new.
The future is back, baby! Coming at the heels of two bifurcated years—one by a virus, the other its vaccine—2022 stands tall in history as the year the Great Machine roared back to life. Belch ye black smoke into that unbearable blue sky!
Welcome to your Earwyrms Wyrpped for 2022. This year, we explored a lot of new genres here in the dirt, from phonk to roadhouse, dungeon synth to goth. We got through 42 issues together, but your favorites were the ones that sounded like home. Here are the most popular Earwyrms issues of 2022.
A confession: I have not finished a single book all year. I normally average between 15 and 30 by year’s end. And listen, I’ve tried—oh! have I tried.
When did 2021 begin? Was it January 1st? It couldn’t be—that was thirty Jeffreys ago. Was it two weeks after we got the second shot? That was May 1st for me. Half a year went by before I emerged, stunted and shaking.
This is the year of our reclaimed youth: I’ve loved more skate pop and power emo this year than I have since Earwyrms began. Last year around this time, music’s big players were coping with the pandemic by dropping albums early or cashing in on nostalgia while young bands waited in the wings and prayed there’d be a future to play through.
We're here—I'll get right to it, but I want to say thank you for reading. Also, I've put them all into a playlist arranged from top to bottom, for whenever you have six hours to kill. Now, for the final leg of the tour:
As we enter the Top 50, you know the routine—this is not a race but a retrospective, and while I do admit that the closer we get to #1, the closer these songs get to my heart, I will not be handing out any trophies.
As I said before, lists can be as prescriptive as they are restrictive if they are read as a hierarchy. Mine should not be; they're subject to the whims of my everyday thoughts and feelings (two of my most favorite things—until we reach the limit of my being and encounter yours). I intend to serve and share, not impose. This is less a competition than a hundred-course meal for the ears, each song a specialty dish on a gourmet menu.
Know that lists like these are flawed by their very nature, limiting art the same way pinning an identity to your infinite spirit will limit what you feel you're able to become. With that in mind, these numbers are not a hierarchy—they are more like tree tags marking a path through a dazzling forest. Think of this more as a guided tour of nature than a tournament or competition.
One of the most frequent questions I get is about how I’ve been able to pick up temporary work throughout my travels without falling afoul of the law.
One of the most frequent questions I get is about how I’ve been able to pick up temporary work throughout my travels without falling afoul of the law.
I can't leave without saying that I lament this had to be on Spotify because it meant I couldn't put Joanna Newsom on the list. Just know that there's a good chance she would've cracked the Top 10, and go listen to Have One on Me if you never have before.
A large chunk of the Top 40 are love songs, a thing I guess I'm just obsessed with. With music being the most directly emotional art, it's natural that this medium best explores these weird heart feelings.
We're getting to the hardest part now—do I really have to choose between two masterpieces, to arbitrarily put one over another? I do. Which is why I must remind you: these opinions are not definitive; they're not even sound. Best songs are as subjective as bagel preferences.
Lots of sad ones this time—sorry!—that's just how the chips fell this round. As I said last week, this project is not meant to be an edict from some supreme musical being, just a catalog of what this idiot kept coming back to over and over since 2010. Ultimately a narrow purview, but maybe you'll hear something you like.
I could say a bunch of sweeping things about the past ten years, but the truth is a decade is hard to package together coherently. I will say that ten years is fun because it's all about what sticks with you.
Here are my twenty favorite songs of the year so far, in reverse order to build suspense. Hold on tight!
To kick off this month of Top 10 Countdowns, I wanted to share the ten best movies of the year. They're more my favorites than the objective best, which is true of all lists, but of this one especially because I didn't get time to see many movies during the tumult of the year.
Listen to my favorite songs of the past six months so you can enjoy them before the summer is over. I wrote about them below in classic backwards-list order, and the playlist mirrors it.
Olivia Rodrigo’s universally acclaimed third album came out the same year the film Obsession made over $300 million dollars at the worldwide box office. This is nothing less than a fact, and the implications are far beyond the scope of this issue; nevertheless, it speaks to a generational changing of the guard, and the universal pattern of emotion and memory for our centennially challenged species.