Back in 2012, I started polling the Dope at the end of the year, to find out what the Teeming Millions thought was the best song to make #1 on the Hot 100 for that year. I’ve kept that up since, and in 2014 I ran a series of retrospective polls to find out what people thought was the best #1 hit of the previous years in the history of the chart (though noone really got interested until I got to 1964 for some weird reason).
Now that the decade’s done, it’s time to look back at the winners of the polls for the previous decade and decide which we think are the best of the best. There’s currently a tie in the Best of 2018 poll, which means both of those songs advance, and as such we have 11 songs to choose from here.
Pick your favorite, keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.
Before I entered the thread, I thought I would most likely not know a single song. I was wrong. I know “Happy”. Yet even never hearing any of the others, I can confidently say I would vote for any of the rest over that one. Does that count? And Pharell, or whoever wrote it, houses have roofs. *Rooms *have ceilings.
ETA: Wait. I just looked up the video for Tik Tok. Yep, I remember that, and loved it. That’s my vote, even though I won’t actually mark it, being that it wouldn’t really be fair.
Gonna have to go with Lizzo. It’s one of the few that I own from this list (purchased in 2017 when it came out!), and I’ve played it about a million times.
That’s a damn good list, though. All are great songs!
Kesha’s “TiK ToK,” with a perfect score in the world-famous Ponch8 Music Rating System, obviously is the only choice. Here’s to another decade of smash hits by Kesha!
“Royals” is a DISTANT second place. Anything with that Justin Bieber imbecile finishes dead-ass last.
One can only wonder what happens to the Ponch8 Music Rating System if Kesha and Bieber ever release a collab.
I personally could’ve gone with almost any of these songs, but picked “Rolling in the Deep” because I felt it had more substance and staying power than the rest.
On a side note, “Royals” won the original 2010-2014 poll.
I could only hum about half of these without looking them up. Most of them have been way overplayed, especially Despacito and Uptown Funk. I went for Hello by Adele as my favourite, knowing it won’t have a chance of winning.
I looked up the Lizzo song on YouTube as I’d never even heard of it. Loved the video, hated the song - way too repetitive for my taste. Interestingly, it has the same basic major-minor chord structure as Hello - but the latter actually develops from it, rather than repeating ad nauseam.
I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I voted for Tik Tok. Fortunately Despacito was there to save me from myself.
Adele is someone I admire more than like, and Uptown Funk was one of those songs that sounded overplayed the first time I heard it. Both Royals and Somebody That I Used to Know are too whiny and gimmicky. The others I had to think before I recognized them, so they aren’t memorable enough to be the best of a decade.
So, Despacito for being a song that can get stuck in my head without getting on my nerves.
“Royals” irrationally annoyed me for some reason the very first time I heard it. Lorde just sounds like an entitled, snarky bitch. I’ve never liked the song since.
I actually ended up going with “Happy” on this one. There’s a lot of songs I like here, and a number that I don’t. (Not a big fan of “Despacito” or “Somebody That I Used to Know.”) “Royals” was pretty good and a nice change of pace for pop hits in the 2010s. Good enough that I bought her follow-up album Melodrama a couple years later, which I think is an amazing album. (I did listen to some of Pure Heroine from which “Royals” is taken, but I wasn’t grabbed by it.) I’m not entirely sure why I voted “Happy,” but there just is something so quintessentially 2010s about that song to me, that drew me to it.
Remember, it’s a #1 song list. I admit to kinda feeling like this in general (thinking newer rock music sucked/was killed by hip hop and pop). I was wrong.
There’s a lot of good rock music out there right now, songs that are filling the spots from #2-10 every year. Highly Suspect is a great example, so is Badflower. Great bands that are all over the radio (especially Sirius 37 Octane) but never quite crack #1 (although I think Highly Suspect did it last year/this year with “16”, a song I dislike). Funny, that.
And Pharell, or whoever wrote it, houses have roofs. *Rooms *have ceilings. 