Unbeliveably, it has been 10 years since 2016. Viewed by many (James Acaster even wrote a book about at it) as one of the best ever years for music, it was also the year that the world started to fall apart. So a pivotal year in so many ways (including the fact that it was the last time Radiohead released an album).
We couldn’t let this anniversary pass without a little retrospective, so here are our team to tell you about the songs they loved and hated from that year:
Fliss Clarke
Best: Kano – Made in England
This was a pickle because my two favourite songs from 2016—”You want it darker” by Leonard Cohen and “Desperado” by Rihanna —were not in my rotation of listening at the time. It was of course the year of Lemonade, but that is a whole work and I respect it as such. The other album I recall absolutely rinsing that year was Kano’s Made in the Manor, an album solidly rooted in memory and place. Meanwhile, my 2016 was a mess. I careened between Manchester, Rio, East London and finally crashed back in Stoke. I remember mainlining Kano for eloquent punchy energy (which I lacked). It’s difficult to choose from the array of notable bangers (see “T shirt weather in the manor”, “3 Wheel-ups”, “GarageSkankFreestyle”) but I’m plumping for “This Is England” for the bombast. A cinematic state-of-the-nation address of garage nostalgia, cultural commentary, and ironic patriotism punctuated by horns, orchestral swings, a melodic bridge and brraps. The assertion “this is England, where you can be a villain or a victim” may be truer than ever? The video is also spectacular.
Worst: Hello – Adele
Elsewhere, I really hated “Cake by the Ocean” by DNCE. It was everywhere. I can appreciate that it is technically a good pop song, but I just couldn’t stand it. Instead of delving into the awful metaphor and saccharine fantasy nonsense, I’d like to take this opportunity to shout out another pop song that was everywhere — “Hello” by Adele — and her performance with Jimmy Fallon and The Roots on classroom instruments. Watch it now.
Rick Larson
Best: A Tribe Called Quest – We The People
2016 was the year everything turned to shit, when a substantial minority of the country, in a spasmic reaction to having had a popular Black President, elevated its imbecilic champion of racism. It’s been an exhausting ten years. Late in 2016, A Tribe Called Quest, on the short list —as short as you want to make it —of greatest ever hip hop groups, unexpectedly released an album and this single, recorded shortly before Phife Dawg’s death. It was an angry and sad howl especially from a group long distinguished by its preternatural cool. The song whacks you with a thunderous low end you feel in your guts. When Q-Tip half sings ‘All you Black folks, you must go/All you Mexicans, you must go,’ he probably could not have even imagined that ten years later this would be explicit state policy, murderously implemented. The song is an epic warning that went unheeded.
Worst: The 1975 – Love Me
This band makes music for people who think Robert Palmer went a little too hard.
Will Collins
Best: Leonard Cohen – You Want it Darker
I almost plumped for something from Painting of a Panic Attack, Frightened Rabbit’s final record. However, on reflection, it’s the album as a whole that I love, rather than any of the individual tracks. Instead, it’s another final album from that year which provides my favourite track of 2016: ‘You Want It Darker’ by Leonard Cohen. Released not long before he died, it pairs a lithe disco bass line with his deep, gravelly voice to hypnotic effect. Choir-like keys and backing voices soar over the top, lending the whole thing the feeling of a ritual. As ways to bow out go, it’s pretty special and the line “I’m ready, my lord” is absolutely devastating. It’s a distillation of everything thsy was great about his music and testament to his ability to shape-shift with the times whilst still retaining his own musical DNA.
Worst: Closer – The Chainsmokers
It was a close-run thing for my most disliked track of the year as well. Drake was everywhere with his bafflingly popular One Dance, but it was Closer by The Chainsmokers that really tipped me over the edge that year. Charmless, derivate EDM-adjacent pop with the kind of toe-curling lyrics you would be embarrassed to discover in your old teenage journals, it’s ubiquity meant that there was no escape from it’s tortures. Discovering that the band itself was equally charmless didn’t help their case.
Tom Burrows
Best: Savages – Adore
Before all of the political chaos and the famous deaths and every working artist and their dog releasing an album, 2016 was just another year. In that quiet first week of January, Savages released ‘Adore’, the final pre-release single of their second album. I was 25 at the time, working a mundane job in an unfamiliar town, eager for change – and, you might say, searching for purpose. After an uninspiring day in the first week back, I watched the video on my laptop when I got home. That slowly building guitar. Jehnny Beth in a darkened room, with that icy stare. And the vital passion of those words. “I understand the urgency of life/in the distance there is truth which cuts like a knife… I will die maybe tomorrow, so I need to say: I adore life.” It still is an incredible song that bursts with desire, and with purpose. Whenever I’m feeling a bit listless or lacking purpose, I turn to ‘Adore’ – and feel that fire within me again.
Worst: Drake – One Dance
It’s more what ‘One Dance’ represents that I have an issue with than the song itself. The song is fine – a gentle dancehall and afrobeats number with a hooky garage sample. But that’s exactly it – it’s fine. And it sat at number 1 in the UK for 15 weeks. I was a Drake fan, lame as it is to admit. I found him to be a compelling storyteller, with the versatile chops to make banger after banger. 2016 promised ‘Views From The 6’, his hometown-focused classic. But what actually arrived was a boring collection of indistinguishable songs about people who have wronged Drake – and some mid-level bops. The reward for this was his most successful album yet.
And so ‘One Dance’ represents that notion to me – why create great art when mediocrity sells? A musical parable for the world at large. Why tell the truth when people vote for the lie? Why promise real things when you get what you want by selling the fake? Drake took the former as a career lesson, following 2016 with album after album of diminishing returns. And I’m not saying ‘One Dance’ was ground zero for the decline of everything in the last 10 years – but things have not been the same since.
James Spearing
Best: Sia – Cheap Thrills
Looking back at what has been claimed by some to be the best year of music ever, it’s clear that there were a lot of big albums that year, none of which I own, or even like that much, or even remember listening to at the time. Clearly I’ve no idea what I was doing that year (well, I do, and I’ll come on to this later). So I could try pretend to be cool and pick something by Frank Ocean, Kaytranada or Solange, but instead I’m going to stick with the song which I genuinely think is my favourite from the time, and which I still absolutely love. Even more cheap thrills if it’s the objectively worse feat. Sean Paul version.
Worst: Nicky Jam – Hasta el Amanecer
To explain my absence from cultural consumption in 2016, I spent a significant part of the year in South America meaning I was far more exposed to Spanish language music than I would otherwise have been. Plenty of names were familiar – Pitbull, Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, perhaps even Mark Anthony – others were less so. Staying in their Latin lane perhaps also meant (the very alive and well machismo culture notwithstanding) they were less exposed to the conversations about toxic masculinity we were starting to have in the English-speaking world. The video for this song, set in a launderette-cum-nightclub is, to use a phrase we might have carelessly thrown around 10 years ago, “a bit rapey”. That and when you’ve heard the infuriatingly slowed down reggaeton beat 20 times a day for 3 months, you’ll definitely hate it too.
Fran Slater
Best: David Bowie – Lazarus and Blackstar
I could have picked any number of songs from this absolutely stellar year for music. It was the last time that Radiohead, my favourite band, released an album – and the likes of ‘Daydreaming’ and ‘Present Tense’ are among their best work. Bon, Iver released their departure album, changing the way they were viewed as an artist and captivating on track after track. Both of the Knowles sisters put out career and genre defining albums packed with cracking tunes. Leonard Cohen released his best music in years.
But for me, it absolutely had to be Bowie. I still hold fast to the theory that the world fell off its axis when Bowie died, but even if that is the case – the impact of his final album and a couple of its standout tracks cannot be overestimated.
I’ve cheated here slightly and picked two songs from the final album, Blackstar. One is the trippy, otherworldly title song which melds drum and bass and jazz influences to create an epic consideration of death and litters in hints of Bowie considering his career up to that point.
There is still debate over whether ‘Lazarus’ was his way of saying goodbye to us all, but opening a song with the lines ‘Look up here, I’m in heaven’ when you know you are living with a terminal illness is a sure fire way to get people talking. In a way, though, none of that matters. What was really important about this song was that it was the best thing Bowie had released since the 80s. And that, in releasing these songs and this album, and then leaving us all in January, he showed that he was still at the forefront of music, that his writing was still using current influences, and that he could still be an inspiration to many musicians who could only hope of getting anywhere near his achievements.
The best in the business, right until the very end.
The Worst: The Weeknd – Can’t Feel My Face
From one artist who released a 2016 album with ‘star’ in the title to another. And that is where the comparison ends.
People genuinely liked this song in 2016 – and there began my decade long bafflement with people who think the Weeknd, who can’t even spell his own name, has any talent.
This absolutely hideous slice of pointless pop seemed to be everywhere for a few months. Not only is it musically uninteresting, heavily generic, and a weak attempt at trying to sound like many better, more important artists – but it also makes absolutely no sense at all. If you can’t feel your face you shouldn’t be singing about it – you should be heading to the GP. And maybe an English tutor so you can learn to spell.
Picky Bastards 