The best songs of 2019 (so far)

Esquire.com: We live in a time where our incredible access to music is both a blessing and a curse. How does one curate the thousands upon thousands of songs that will be released this year alone? Thankfully, we’re pretty much tethered to our headphones most waking hours listening to all the latest tracks from the best and least known artists of today. Here, we’ve curated the best songs of 2019 so far.

Earl Sweatshirt — MTOMB (feat. Liv.E)

It’s incredible to see Earl Sweatshirt completely reject popular hip hop music. After his breakthrough solo album, Doris, it seemed that he was primed to be the next big star in hip-hop. But, throughout this decade, he’s rejected that possibly trajectory more and more, with his music becoming more strange, more experimental, and increasingly more unique. His latest collage of creativity comes in the form of Feet of Clay, a 7-song album that clocks in at less than 15 minutes. It’s a fascinating, and brief, collection of music.

Pusha T — Puppets (Succession Remix)

It’s the crossover of the Succession theme song with Pusha T that no one expected or knew they needed. Who would have thought that affluent orchestral opening to the genius HBO show would make for a perfect hip-hop remix And, who better to do this than Pusha T, a rapper who has long written about the gritty means of fighting your way to the top. Sure, lyrically it’s not his most subtle work—listing off themes from the series like, Family, fortune, envy, jealousy—but the overall package is just too perfect of a match for both Pusha T and Succession fans to covet.

Angel Olsen — Lark

The opening track to her expansive fifth album, Lark places the listener directly in the middle of Angel Olsen’s vast sonic landscape. Olsen’s vaulting, echoing vocals bound over a wide-reaching chorus of strings and bold, marching drums. It’s a statement that’s at once intimate and vast, with Olsen singing Wishing we could only find one another  All we’ve done here is blind one another  Hate can’t live in this heart here forever. It’s a build-up of emotion trapped in a lonely place and sets the tone for a powerful album to come.

Lana Del Rey — The Greatest

On her new album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, Lana Del Rey fully realises the style and sound she’s been cultivating for her entire career. The Greatest is a haunting, beautiful ballad, like a hangover from a bygone era. It has hope, and loss, and lush, layered production that allows Rey’s yearning, breathy vocals to inhabit that lost and privileged persona that remains weirdly fascinating. 

Normani — Motivation

In August, Normani swung through with a late in the game contender for song of the summer with Motivation. Her first single outside of Fifth Harmony, Motivation is a genuine bop, firmly establishing her as a pop star that calls to mind the queens of the late ’90s. It’s worth noting that this video has some of the most impressive dance moves I’ve seen in a music video this year so far. Normani has it all.

The Highwomen — Crowded Table

Watch out now, a new group of outlaws have rolled into Music City. Following in the footsteps of Johnny, Waylon, Willie, and Kris—aka the Highwaymen—Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby, and Amanda Shires have formed a new badass supergroup, appropriately and ambitiously titled the Highwomen. Their striking debut single, Redesigning Women, made waves late in July but it’s their quick follow-up, Crowded Table that will stop you dead in your tracks. With a honeyed, four-part harmony and a moving plea for inclusivity, it’s the exact song for these uneven times.

HAIM — Summer Girl

With a doot-doo melody, a jazzy lean, and feather light production, the sweetest song of the summer has arrived. Danielle Haim penned the song for her partner, Ariel Rechtshaid, who co-produced the cut with Vampire Weekend-alum Rostam, following his diagnosis of testicular cancer several years ago. (He is now in good health.) “We were touring on and off at this time and every time we were on the phone with each other or when I would come home in between shows, I wanted to be this light that shined on him when he was feeling very dark,” Danielle wrote on Twitter after the song released.

Chance the Rapper — I Got You (Always And Forever)

Seven years after his first mixtape and three years after Coloring Book (his third mixtape, which won Best Rap Album at the following Grammy awards) catapulted him onto the A-list, Chance the Rapper has finally released his debut LP. The Big Day dropped in the second half of July and at 22 songs and 77 minutes long it frequently sags under its lengthy runtime, but the first half highlight arrives in the form of this ebullient love song. Featuring En Vogue, it’s an irresistible tribute to the rapper’s wife, Kirsten, and the ’90s R&B Chance grew up on.

Maren Morris — Girl

It was the cut that could. The last time a song from a female artist topped the Billboard Country Airplay chart was the week of February 24—in 2018. Until now, that is. With an intoxicating swirl of R&B and classic rock behind some seriously soaring vocals, the lead single and title track off of Maren Morris’s explosive second LP reached the summit at the end of July.

Charli XCX & Christine and the Queens — Gone

It’s hard to imagine a misery that feels as good as the new team-up from dance-funk master Christine & the Queens and Neo-pop royalty Charli XCX. “I feel so unstable, hate these people,” Charli rails early on the second single off her upcoming self-titled LP. “How they making me feel lately. They making me weird, baby, lately.” But that discomfort is a win for her audience.

(Sandy) Alex G — Gretel

The way Alex Giannascoli describes the origins of his collaboration with Frank Ocean is hilariously casual: “His manager emailed me when we were on tour in the U.K. and was like, ‘Do you want to work with my client?’ And I was like, ‘Sure,”’ Alex told Fader. “I didn’t know enough to be excited. He makes good music. I was just like, Yeah.” And that’s how Alex G, a beloved and amorphous indie singer-songwriter, began working with a musical genius like Frank Ocean on Blonde, one of the best albums of the decade. You can actually hear Alex’s influence trickling all throughout Blonde, from his shape-shifting melodies to his gentle, gurgling guitar.

Mark Ronson feat. Angel Olsen — True Blue

It’s not a collaboration that anyone would have expected—folk singer-songwriter Angel Olsen and funk pop master Mark Ronson. Yet, this meeting of artists is a surprisingly perfect match, with Ronson’s glowing production propelling Olsen’s dramatic vocals. 

Stormzy — Crown

With the crossover success of his debut album Gang Signs & Prayer here in the states, Stormzy has become the biggest new voice coming out of the UK grime rap scene. With a headlining performance at this year’s upcoming Glastonbury, he’s currently on his way to being one of the most powerful new rappers in the game. That’s what he’s wrestling with on the gospel rap of Crown, a surprisingly melodic and beautiful turn for the young rapper. 

Raveena — Petal

Raveena occupies a powerful—and important—spot in pop and R&B. In 2018, she used her song Temptation to come out as bisexual to her fans and family. Her music marks a welcome and beautiful blending of cultures and sounds. On the lush, inviting Petal, she leaves her album, Lucid, on a comforting and tranquil place.

Denzel Curry — Ricky

As Denzel Curry told FADER about his new album, ZUU, “It goes from the sounds of where I grew up, to what I was raised around, to the people I was raised around, to the sounds that pretty much shaped the person I am.” That theme of his native Carol City neighbourhood in Miami Gardens resonates most clearly on RICKY. In a tight two-and-a-half minutes Curry is able to pack a sweeping narrative of his own upbringing.

Flume – High Beams feat. slowthai

Harley Streten, who produces music as Flume, has become a streaming behemoth thanks to a filigree taste for easy-to-digest ear candy. Never Be Like You, featuring Kai and Say It, which features Tove Lo, both massive cuts off his last LP, Skin, twinkled in all the right ways—breathy vocals, catchy hooks, plenty of ooo-ooohs. His 2019 mixtape, Hi This Is Flume, throws that recipe in the incinerator.

FKA twigs – Cellophane

A year after revealing she’d undergone surgery to remove six fibrous tumors from her uterus, FKA twigs returned with her most masterful work yet. The stark ballad, which swaps her usually twitchy electro for understated piano and an ocean of atmospherics, sees her grieving the end of a relationship. Twigs has always been a visual artist, and for her latest, the dancer spent the months following her operation in training for this transfixing pole dancing routine. To watch it is to witness her full triumph back to health and the dawn of a new era in her career. It’s scary to think she’s just getting started.

Tank and the Bangas – Smoke.Netflix.Chill

Find me more fun album than Green Balloon, the major label debut from New Orleans’ hip-hop-infused funk and soul experimentalists Tank and the Bangas. You can’t! Not in 2019, anyway. In many ways, the 17-song set, recorded in 10 different studios and featuring 30 names in the credits, joyfully bounces from highlight to highlight, but this cheeky cut stands out from the rest. Frontwoman Tarriona “Tank” Ball, who got her start as a slam poet, is absolutely magnetic.

Jenny Lewis – Wasted Youth

Regret over a past heroin addiction has never been so danceable. It’s haunting, especially in light of the death of the singer’s own mother, who struggled with the addiction and died in the fall of 2017 due to complications from liver cancer. But it’s also inviting—and the interplay between the two competing reactions it inspires is completely bewitching.

Bruce Springsteen – Hello Sunshine

At 69 years old and 18 studio albums into a legendary career, The Boss is finally ready to slow down. “You know I always liked my walking shoes,” the singer, who catapulted into superstardom with his Born to Run LP in 1975, admits early on Hello Sunshine, his first single since 2012 and the first track off his Western Stars album. What follows is an unhurried meditation on the dark, lonesome corners of the mind, spun around a paired-back country arrangement.

Lil Nas X – Old Town Road feat. Billy Ray Cyrus

It launched as many think pieces as it did memes and shot straight to No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. (It has since stayed there for five consecutive weeks.) But outside of the conversations regarding how the song is a perfect encapsulation of internet culture or a defiant denier of genre constrictions, Justin Bieber actually identified the song’s merits best. He’s right. The cut combines bone-rattling bass, old timey strings, and a hook with talons a mile long. It’s a phenomenon, in every sense of the word.

Solange – Binz

If there’s a flaw with the 14th track on Solange’s remarkable 2019 LP, When I Get Home, it’s that there simply isn’t more of it. With a runtime shy of two minutes, the shimmying cut tees you up to hit the repeat button anywhere from 10 to 1,00,000 million times before you feel satisfied.

Lion Babe – Western World ft. Raekwon

What do you get when you mix the easy-R&B stylings of New York City vibe-masters Lion Babe with Raekwon’s upbeat flow and a fantastical, deserted Wild West setting? The best song off the duo of singer Jillian Hervey and producer Lucas Goodman’s second LP, Cosmic Wind, and one of the grooviest cuts of 2019, that’s what. Lion Babe (Hervey is the daughter of actress Vanessa Williams) have been spreading the gospel of blissed out, sexy soundtracks since their 2012 introduction but their best work arrived this year. Their songs rarely beg for a dance floor—tracks meander more than explode—and now newly released from a major label contract, they also feel less in pursuit of hit-status.

GRACEY – Different Things

One of the greatest benefits to the rise of streaming is an evening out of the playing field. Young artists are able to break through to cultivate a passionate audience with an immediacy former generations couldn’t. Soundcloud rap, which has launched the careers of artists like 21 Savage, Juice WRLD, and more has become a genre onto itself. Pop, where artists traditionally win with carefully curated images and rigid marketing plans, has been harder, but a perfect example is the wallop that the smokey debut single from the 21-year-old GRACEY served in March.

Billie Eilish – bury a friend

When 17-year-old Billie Eilish released When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go, her lauded major label debut, in April, she made history. The gothic set, which bowed at No.1 on the Billboard 200, became the third most-streamed LP ever for a female artist. The 14-song collection is full of highlights.

Jamila Woods – Zora

The tracklist for Jamila Woods’s upcoming album represents some of the titans of 20th century culture. There’s Frida, Miles, Muddy, Basquiat—all masters of craft who looked at identity in revolutionary ways. And near the top of the list is Zora, a fitting choice to be Woods’s first single among such company. An author and anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston’s work has been championed for how it captured African-American life in the South. That serves as an excellent basis for what Woods will explore on her coming album.

Sharon Van Etten – Seventeen

Sharon Van Etten’s Seventeen fades in like a distant memory coming slowly into focus. The song marks a powerful moment of cathartic self-reflection—a confident look back at the woman Van Etten once was and the woman she has become. The perspective here is what makes Van Etten’s song such an emotional one. She takes all the fears and anxiety of youth and responds to who she once was as a mother might speak to her child or as a sister might speak to her younger sibling. Van Etten has called Seventeen her New York song—one inspired by the change she’s seen around her and going back to the places she hung out in as a younger woman. But in this song, time passing is a source of power that, with age, has given her both wisdom and clarity.

Jessica Pratt – Poly Blue

“Whatever place my music comes from, it is definitely divorced from reality,” Jessica Pratt has said of her new album, Quiet Signs. And This Time Around captures a sort of mysticism from a bygone era—one that existed in some sort of imaginary life. It sounds like a lost gem from an unknown ’60s singer songwriter—some sort of forgotten beauty captured in a time and a place. It’s a simple song that yearns with loss and beauty, and the delicate chords distil the song’s emotion down to a simple and powerful poetry.

Juan Wauters – Guapa

Up until this latest album, Juan Wauters mostly wrote in English with prose that he often equated to Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. But La Onda de Juan Pablo is Wauters’s first album entirely in Spanish, and Guapa acts like a perfect sort of escapism that was able to penetrate a tumultuous winter here in the states. With sing-along vocals, claps, and a sunny melody, the Uruguayan singer-songwriter emits basks in a youthful kind of innocence—a departure from fear or pain or drama. Kind of like a South American Raffi, if you will. In a time when it’s hard to find comfort in anything, Wauters might be one of the only guaranteed sources of solace we can find.

Ariana Grande – Fake Smile

Within the past year Ariana Grande has—at 25 years old—dealt with what most people hope to never go through in a lifetime. Despite all of this, Grande released two of the biggest pop albums of the decade within a span of three months. And on Fake Smile, Grande unpacks how she’s been forced to put on a happy face while managing the pain in her personal life.

Lizzo – Juice

Lizzo’s ascendency to pop superstardom has been a long time coming. By 2019, it’s all but inevitable. So it makes sense that Lizzo kicked off 2019 with one of her most fabulous bangers yet with Juice. The song comes with a statement that the rapper and singer has been making her entire career. As she told Vulture earlier this year, she’s learning to embrace some of her labels as a “body-positive rapper.” With Juice among a number of refreshing and ravishing singles Lizzo dropped in the last few months, she’s all but primed to be the artist we need in 2019.

James Blake – Mile High (feat. Travis Scott, Metro Boomin)

Though in recent years James Blake has worked to align himself more as a hip-hop producer than an experimental dance artist, it’s on his latest album, Assume Form, that he fully digs into the genre. On an album that features both Andre 3000 and Rosalia is Mile High with Travis Scott & Metro Boomin. Production-wise the track has Blake exploring the low end in fascinating ways he’s done his entire career, while lending his sound to a more trap-focused beat. It’s a perfect blurring of production between Blake and his collaborator Metro Boomin. 

Maren Morris – Common (feat. Brandi Carlile)

Maren Morris dropped her collaboration with Brandi Carlile just after the latter dominated the 2019 Grammys. The song is a powerful statement not just about the state of the Grammys, but about country music in general. While the ACM awards might be ignoring female country artists, everyone else is taking notice—from massive streaming numbers to critical acclaim (see also Kacey Musgraves’s beloved Album of the Year-winning Golden Hour).

Maxo Kream – Meet Again

“I’d rather be carried by 6 before I’m judged by 12,” Maxo Kream opens on Meet Again. The Houston rapper is one of the most concise new writers in hip-hop, and this line serves as a primer for a song that tells a vivid story about the horrors of mass incarceration that continues to tear apart at-risk communities. At a time when the issue has become a dominate conversation in hip-hop, Kream takes a complex systemic issue and narrows it down to its simplest, most powerful pathos. His tone is hauntingly matter-of-fact as he weaves a personal narrative of friends who are either dead or in jail.

Vampire Weekend – 2021

It’s been six long years since Vampire Weekend’s excellent third studio album, and it’s unclear what place the band has in 2019. Music and culture has changed dramatically in that time, and it’s hard to say where a band made up of a bunch of privileged Columbia University boys fits into the fold today. While Harmony Hall is the anchor of their first two songs from the upcoming new album, Father of the Bride, there’s something so frivolous and charming about the 1 minute and 38 second 2021. The song is short and—as someone who really appreciates a short song—it wastes no time in delivering a succinct and delightful little melody like a bite of chocolate after a big meal. Like the best of short songs, it leaves you satisfied while wanting more.