25. Grenade—Bruno Mars: “Grenade” was the third consecutive Bruno Mars-featured single to reach #1, and while he was already starting to establish himself as a bankable star, this was the first one on which he showed a potential energy to enable him to write enduring songs. Unlike the sheer sentimentality of “Just The Way You Are” or his chorus on B.o.B.’s “Nothin’ on You”, Bruno displays the full breadth of his impressive vocal range via his heartbreak. “Grenade” wasn’t his first good pop song, but it was his first good pop song that hinted at somebody with potential for greatness.
24. Sexy And I Know It—LMFAO: “Sexy And I Know It” was divisive in ways that I’m not sure it would have been later in the decade, but in 2011, America wasn’t quite ready to embrace the silly pleasures of this goofy duo. It’s amazing, in retrospect, that anyone took them seriously—they were named after a chat acronym, went by the member names RedFoo and SkyBlu, and included a verse consisting entirely of repeating the word “wiggle” while using the lyric “Girl look at that body—I work out!” as a hook. Of course it was a joke, but the thumping bass and synthesizers made the song earnestly infectious.
23. Rude Boy—Rihanna: There was a stretch in the late 2000s and early 2010s where Rihanna shot straight to the top of the pop chart seemingly thanks to our collective muscle memory, and her ode to Jamaican ska culture wasn’t merely found in the title—“Rude Boy” is an arena-fied version of distinctly Caribbean sounds. Admittedly, the slower verses and bridge are a bit undercooked, but perhaps it was unfair to expect her to maintain the rapid delivery of the chorus and pre-chorus for a full four minutes.
22. Truth Hurts—Lizzo: Assuming you were able to traverse the endless hyper-serious thinkpieces in 2019 ascribing broader significance to Lizzo, one got the pleasure of sitting back and enjoying really fun pop music. While Lizzo is far from a crooner, her turns of phrase and charisma bleed through in her casual, half-sung half-rapped delivery, and while the lyrics are hardly poetry, “Truth Hurts” has two or three of the most memorable lines of the decade.
21. Locked Out of Heaven—Bruno Mars: It became such a vital part of the Bruno Mars narrative that it’s easy to forget how out of left field “Locked Out of Heaven” was for him. The song was inspired by the reggae/new wave of The Police (while “Message in a Bottle” was the most oft-cited influence, I jump to “Masoko Tango”, but I’m also a Police nerd), but once the song emerges from the obvious in the intro and verses, the chorus comes in full force, and while the song never charted on the rock charts, the pounding drums in conjunction with Bruno’s confident vocal are as firmly entrenched in arena rock as any number-one hit of the decade.
20. Old Town Road—Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus: That this song went three months lingering in the lower reaches of genre charts and then, after a mini-controversy over the song’s genre categorization, became the longest-running number-one in the history of the Billboard pop charts is a testament to the viral nature of the song and of the era, but it’s also a testament to a genre that was a massive cultural force throughout the 2010s but didn’t manage to hit #1 until 2019—country rap. While the song’s omission from country charts isn’t without logic, the same could be said of many of the chart’s more hip-hop influenced tracks of recent years. And although Lil Nas X isn’t a great technical rapper or singer, whichever you want to call it, his charisma made him an easy artist to root for, and the song’s sampling of Nine Inch Nails’s ambient “34 Ghosts IV” is one of the more effective, creative samples of the era.
19. Blank Space—Taylor Swift: Following up the borderline novelty song that was “Shake It Off”, Taylor Swift ventured back into her increasingly sophisticated pop sensibilities with “Blank Space”. The song had electropop flourishes but the star of the show is Swift’s lyrics, which are among the strongest of the decade’s number-ones. Much of the Taylor Swift media discourse of the early part of the decade aged terribly (a bunch of dudes fixated way too much on a woman in her early twenties not finding a nice boy and settling down) and this sly dig at those who hounded her personal life seemed to stop such takes in their tracks.
18. Blurred Lines—Robin Thicke ft. T.I. and Pharrell Williams: Despite being one of the best-selling singles of all-time and spending nearly the entire summer of 2013 atop the pop charts, it’s nearly impossible to find people in 2019 willing to admit to the song’s virtues. While the lyrics were kind of clumsy (though far less overtly anti-consent than, say, the far less thoroughly canceled “Baby It’s Cold Outside”) and the T.I. rap verse is deeply unnecessary, the production is a throwback to the minimalist style Pharrell had taken to dominating pop radio a decade earlier. And if the Marvin Gaye estate was able to successfully sue the songwriters for plagiarism of “Got to Give It Up”, it is a minor miracle that Oasis weren’t sued for roughly half the songs they ever released, and I say this as somebody who loves Oasis.
17. Imma Be—Black Eyed Peas: “Imma Be” was a relatively minor hit for the band that dominated the pop charts in 2009, but it aged far better than the mega-hits “Boom Boom Pow” or “I Gotta Feeling”. While the first half of the song is already an improvement, with its sparse production a particular asset during Fergie’s verse, the second half is where the song goes from acceptable pop radio presence to something far more interesting—a synth and bass driven bit of bravado that cements “Imma Be” as among the weirdest chart-toppers of the decade and easily the track off “The E.N.D.” that most encapsulates the hyper-futuristic aesthetic to which the group was aiming.
16. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together—Taylor Swift: Swift’s first not-at-all-country pop song, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” combines idiosyncratically paced verses that evokes anger, but with the simple, anthemic chorus, it becomes readily apparent that Taylor Swift isn’t just pretending to break up (think John Waite’s “Missing You”)—she is confident and poised and angry not at the person with whom her relationship has ended, but at the implication that she isn’t confident and poised in the breakup itself. That the song still got some country radio airplay and was even nominated for a CMT Music Award was a matter of delayed reaction: from this point forward, there was no question that Taylor Swift was going to define her future recordings in exactly her terms.
15. Starboy—The Weeknd ft. Daft Punk: The Weeknd’s music was characterized by its dark R&B energy and Daft Punk’s music was characterized by fun danceability, and “Starboy” managed to combine the two. Ultimately, while the lyrics are still on the darker side, the song leans slightly more to the French electronic duo’s sound, and the piano and drum machines give the song a mechanical feel that plays off The Weeknd’s earnestness.
14. S&M—Rihanna ft. Britney Spears: A brief mea culpa—I never heard the Britney Spears remix until I started doing this list (it's fine, though I prefer the original). But the same thing makes either version effective—the thumping, hyper-electronic instrumentation and Rihanna’s “na na na come on” vocal hook that comprises its chorus. The song received some criticism for its, to put it lightly, straightforward lyrics, but that the song’s primary hook is so simple is all the evidence that should be necessary to conclude that if you were listening that closely to the lyrics, you were missing the appeal of the song, which was to be played loudly at clubs and not carefully pondered or considered.
13. Teenage Dream—Katy Perry: While her work up until this point had been characterized by hyper-juvenile songs aimed primarily at tweens, “Teenage Dream” was a quantum leap forward and remains Katy Perry’s best song. Despite the title literally referring to youth, the song is lyrically one of an adult’s reminiscence, and while it isn’t without its dance flourishes, it is also at heart a somewhat straightforward pop-rock song that could have easily passed as an acoustic guitar ballad had it come from somebody else’s discography.
12. Can’t Stop the Feeling!—Justin Timberlake: Following his teenybopper boy band days, Justin Timberlake reached popular and critical acclaim as a solo artist by traveling darker roads. And with “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”, Timberlake turned the car around and hit the accelerator like he was drag racing. But while the song is every bit as cheesy and corny as you would expect from a song on the soundtrack to a DreamWorks movie based on toys, it was also deliriously fun. Heavily inspired by Michael Jackson-style disco-pop, the song broke absolutely no new ground, but in an increasingly fractured music landscape, there’s also something heartening about a song whose popularity can bridge generational gaps.
11. thank u, next—Ariana Grande: Most pop songs about failed relationships take one of two stances: either the relationship’s end is a devastating, crushing blow which could never be overcome, or the other party is a horrible monster who must be hated. But in “thank u, next”, Ariana Grande takes a refreshing and frankly more realistic perspective. She speaks of her ex-boyfriends in neutral-to-favorable terms but never regrets dating them, because they made her the person she is today. And yet the song never jumps into saccharine territory—the vocals are understated but immaculate and the production is reserved in a way that gives the lyrics an additional layer of sincerity.
