Last spring Daft Punk debuted a short clip of “Get Lucky” between sets at Coachella, upstaging almost all of the flesh-and-blood artists who actually performed and kicking off one of the most elaborate album rollouts of the 21st century. For almost all of us, the song existed first as merely a discotheque beat, a short Slinky of rhythm guitar, and Pharrell Williams—pop’s own Rasputin—crooning, “We’ve come too far to give up who we are.” It still stands as the most epic tease of the 2010s, yet somehow the song didn’t disappoint when Daft Punk released the whole thing, and it doesn’t disappoint now that we’ve lived with it for a year. Those 15 seconds blossomed into a full mirrorball world, where the future is reflected and refracted in the past. 

Daft Punk mainstays Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo hung back so their collaborators can shine: Pharrell projects the barely-contained composure of a guy hosting a kegger while his parents are out of town, and Nile Rodgers' rhythm guitar rebukes the idea that the best guitarists only play solos. If dance music has become the sound of the 2010s, then Daft Punk sought to locate the roots of contemporary pop music in the popularly maligned genre of disco. Conceptually, that elevates “Get Lucky” to the status of monumental triumph for poptimists (and makes Pharrell the Obama to the rockist Tea Party). And yet, this smash hit is more than simply a history lesson or a pick-up anthem. In the crackle of Rodgers’ guitar, in the easy lope of the rhythm section, in the human-after-all groove lies something truly life-affirming: “what keeps the planets spinning, the force from the beginning.” —Stephen M. Deusner

Daft Punk: "Get Lucky" [ft. Pharrell]

Hearing "Zebra" for the first time is its own small journey. It's not the kind with winding roads and endless peaks and valleys, though; this is a slow, steady path that rises with the patience of a band only getting better. Beach House's Teen Dream opener charms you with its utter simplicity—at the song's core is one beautiful, relaxed guitar melody, around which Victoria Legrand sighs breathlessly and wonders, "Don't I know you better than the rest?" In a way, "Zebra" was our introduction to the band Beach House is today: a pair of peerless artists harnessing stadium-sized emotions and sweeping rock gestures into a modest bedroom-pop aesthetic. It's no surprise, then, that when the music crescendos after Legrand's last iteration of "any way you run, you run before us…," it feels like you've been taken to a vista overlooking lush landscapes in need of exploration. —Patric Fallon

Beach House: "Zebra"

More than any song on Kanye West's stuffed, eventful My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , "Monster" demonstrated the album's "Master of Ceremonies" approach—bring everyone under one crowded roof and corral them somehow, finding something important for each of them to do. "Monster" was Kanye's trickiest balancing act, the one that brought the world the wonderful, hallucinatory image of Bon Iver rolling joints with Rick Ross in a Hawaii studio. Ross, still in the process of molting his troubled early status, made the most of four lines, framing the song as a "jungle" and (literally) introducing the song's hook: "Kanye West samples, here's one for example." Kanye, rapping in a dead-eyed monotone, coined the catchphrase that defined the unapologetically ugly, venal, and abrasive character he was playing on MBDTF --"Hannh?" Jay-Z, using one of the least flattering vocal tones in his career, pronounced "love" as "LAAAHF" and still managed to cut deeply, flashing a vein of real bitterness towards estranged former colleagues who he had "made millionaires." Bon Iver showed the world he could snarl.

But years later, the only real reason to be singling out "Monster", a great song from a uniformly great album, is Nicki Minaj. If Kanye was the album's Master of Ceremonies, then Minaj was the lion, the lion tamer, the sword juggler, and the entire clown car at once. Every voice she'd ever experimented with in the previous three years flashed past you in an Autobahn blur, and every line became a standard. She began by eating our brains. By the time she screamed "ROAAAR" at the end, an eternity later, she had a new career. The conversations that led to the current moment, where she feels poised to claim Best Rapper Alive status from most anyone who cares to debate such things, began here. —Jayson Greene

Kanye West: "Monster"

In retrospect, “Dance Yrself Clean” was the ticking clock counting down LCD Soundsystem’s final moments as a band. But it was also a grand, benevolent gesture of resolve: “We should try a little harder/ In the tedious march of the few,” James Murphy groans at the song's chugging conclusion. As has now been immortalized in the documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits , when LCD went out, they tried pretty damn hard to go out on a high note. “Dance Yrself Clean” stands out for incorporating all the muscular onslaughts of organized noise that made them a thrilling live band—Murphy’s fervent bleats, punkish cymbal-crashing, aggressive but pristine synthesizers—in fits of passion that acknowledge the fleeting nature of the whole fame-and-success thing. When, halfway through the song, Murphy’s world-weary muttering vaults up into a heart-thumping assault (“Don’t you want me to wake up?”), it’s a reminder, potent even three years after their departure, to feel something before you miss it. —Abby Garnett

LCD Soundsystem:  "Dance Yrself Clean"

A few words and concepts that have been used to describe “Inspector Norse”: fireworks, Space Invaders, human kindness, a flute of champagne, riding around in KITT from "Knight Rider", an upscale intergalactic disco party, vaporized gold, the sound of ketamine for breakfast, a moonlit beach, the mothership landing as well as an alien abduction, an eargasm and/or an orgasm. Or, as one YouTube commenter wished: “I want to sniff this song up my nose.” 

No matter the metaphor, Todd Terje’s 2012 earworm is that rare track that can be all things for all dancers, part nu-disco, part Italo, part synth-funk, part house, a little bit techno. “Inspector Norse” has worked its magic poolside and festival-wide. It both served as the climax of his dizzying debut It’s Album Time and was the opening track for It’s the Arps , his ode to a seemingly outdated synthesizer. The ARP 2600 has done everything from power “ Blue Monday ” to intensify the funk of “ Frankenstein ”. It’s added cosmic dust to sleazy disco and provided the voice of R2-D2, but Terje’s genius was to make that old keyboard sound wholly resonant in the present moment. 

And “Inspector Norse” does exactly that, being vintage yet futuristic, cheesy and transportive all at once. It’s catchy pop of the highest caliber (coming from a guy who made a great dance remix out of “ Pop Muzik ”): as joyous as “ Happy ”, as unstoppable as “ We Can’t Stop ”, as intoxicating as “ Drunk in Love ”. Despite there being not a word uttered across its ecstasy-enhancing six minutes, “Inspector Norse” –all whiz-banging, constantly peaking, face-tingling, with that transcendent key change at the halfway point of it—is a great pop song. —Andy Beta

Todd Terje: "Inspector Norse" (via SoundCloud )

Months before it was released as a single, this little-known bonus track from Nicki Minaj’s debut album was the unexpected beneficiary of a gushing fan letter and impromptu karaoke performance from Taylor Swift live on Nashville radio. That this isolated event could snowball into “Super Bass” becoming a world-striding pop behemoth is indicative of how thoroughly social-media virality has overtaken pop culture this past half-decade, but it was a snowball made possible by the all-embracing charms of the song itself. Its cackling come-ons delivered with the excited sincerity of a first crush, “Super Bass” allows— demands —pop music’s reigning signature bad-girl and good-girl archetypes to find common cause in its love-struck exuberance. 

Certainly, “Super Bass” reveals Minaj at her oddball but endearing best, simultaneously gratuitous and gregarious as she extols the virtues of a dude who’s “slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye” and threatens to slap any competition treading on her territory (not that she sounds pissed; she would, of course, do the same in their shoes). Where Nicki’s prior stabs at pop crossover predictably toned down her wackiness and wordplay, here everything pulls in the same direction, the irrepressible bubbliness of the tongue-twisting rhymes and the marvelous over-intonation—“I mean…SIGH…sickenin’ eyes”—catalyzing rather than the detracting from its (in retrospect, blindingly obvious) crossover appeal.

By the same token, with its glittering electronic façade and childlike, mnemonic vocal hook, “Super Bass” is 2010s pop par excellence—not merely a superior example of hip-hop’s flirtation with EDM, but almost a redemption of the entire concept. Whilst the song would be ignorable without Nicki’s hyperactive verses, it would also be only half as good without the communal release of its singalong chorus, Ester Dean emoting like her face is scrunched up with exhilaration. Having long since graduated from meme to cliché, the status of “Super Bass” as a loveable karaoke standard draws equally from the impossibly tangled intertwining of these threads, the knots tied as firmly as on Eminem’s “Stan” or Kanye’s “Gold Digger”, and more prettily than on either. —Tim Finney

Nicki Minaj: "Super Bass" [ft. Ester Dean]

"Everything Is Embarrassing" is ostensibly a done-with-your-shit kiss-off, and it’s a glorious one, but it's the kind written by someone who needs weeks upon weeks of rehearsal in front of their bedroom mirror before they gather enough courage to actually deliver it. In other words, it's also a triumphant wallflower anthem. It even sounds like it could be playing out entirely in Sky Ferreira's head, the result of being too scared to confront the lout who isn't holding up their end of the bargain.

In one of the best uses of delayed gratification so far this decade, Ferreira doesn't even utter the track's titular phrase until nearly two-thirds of the way through. (By contrast, in Dev Hynes' demo for Ferreira, he arrives there before a minute has elapsed.) When she finally does, it carries a finality that the rest of the track does its best to avoid. There's a serenity in Ferreira's voice that reveals she'll likely emerge on the other side just fine. And there’s a generosity, too—after all, the first words that are uttered on the song are "I know you're trying," even if the way Ferreira's vocals are pitched down suggests that there's no comfort to be found in this knowledge. There's the catch: She might be ready to move on, but she's still feeling a million conflicting emotions, and few songs capture that internal strife as honestly and effortlessly as "Everything Is Embarrassing" does. —Renato Pagnani

Sky Ferreira: "Everything Is Embarrassing"

When “Climax” dropped in early 2012, it almost became a hit out of sheer relief. Usher had sounded uncomfortable in his own music for years, having been taken out of the bedroom into Max Martin and will.i.am’s Procrustean bed of beats, and several years’ worth of pop-R&B nobodies were still being floated as “the next Usher.” Diplo hadn’t yet become the guy it’d become a cliché for artists to suddenly collaborate with; Ariel Rechtshaid was mostly unknown. His field of peers, too, looked a lot different: Miguel was the hook singer on Wale’s risible then-hit “Lotus Flower Bomb”; Frank Ocean and the Weeknd were two guys people still thought were doing remotely the same thing; “ PBR&B ” was a term people used unironically and often.

All these contributed to “Climax”’s praise—but, crucially, not its overpraise. It’s no outlier; as an autopsy of a relationship, “Climax” is as unflinching as anything on Confessions , and on the disjointed but underrated Looking 4 Myself it was neither the most searing nor most forward-thinking track. (The former would probably be the album’s Rico Love vehicles; the latter would be “I Care 4 U” and “Twisted,” which anticipated Timbo 2013 and Disco 2014 while no one paid attention.) The genius of a “Climax” is that it’s a big ol’ lie: there isn’t a climax, at least not where you’d expect it. The chorus is less like a hook than a rondo: Usher circling back to a conclusion, over and over, as if he might Groundhog Day himself back into love. And while “Climax” does attempt to build up to one, Usher red-hot and pleading and singing like he hadn’t gotten the chance to in years, it ends with a flaccid crumple, right back to going nowhere fast; the real climax was earlier, about two minutes in, and no one noticed. As a metaphor for a relationship it’s brutal; as a vocal showcase, it still mostly works; as a songwriting trick, it’s as devastating two and a half years on.

The “Climax” collaboration was lightning that couldn’t strike twice—Usher and Diplo’s other pairing, Looking 4 Myself bonus track “2nd Round,” all but acknowledged this—but nor did it need to. Diplo, who needed “Climax” far less than Usher did, went off to do his own thing. Usher got not only his first great urban hit in years but also a shot of creative inspiration; this year, “Good Kisser” proved he could replicate similar results with core R&B guys (Pop & Oak, mostly). Most of all, Usher sounded iconic again. People had forgotten it could happen. —Katherine St. Asaph

Usher: "Climax"

"Countdown" may not have unseated "Single Ladies" as the definitive Beyoncé hit, but it's the song that, more than any other, shows off what she can do. It takes for granted that she is the biggest pop star in the world at its moment—that everyone knows who she is, and who her longtime black-diamond-rockin' boof is, and that she's pregnant with a three, and that she has of course inherited the treasures of every previous generation of pop royalty. She sounds like she's having more fun than any other royal has ever had, too. When she sings "there's ups and downs in this low-oo-uv," there's no suggestion that downs are actually within the realm of possibility. 

"Countdown" is a perfect Twitter feed of a song, skipping to a new tone and a new hook every couple of seconds. (Here are the steel drums, here are the "Crazy in Love" horns, here's a dancehall cadence, here's a hashtag-rap couplet...) Beyoncé doesn't have to do more than namedrop Houston Rockets and the ladies she's instructing and Roberta Flack-via-Lauryn Hill's "Killing Me Softly" to stake out her territory; it saves her time to go on at length about how happy she is about that boof of hers. And, naturally, "Countdown" shines its beams through the unsurpassed carat count of Queen Bey's voice. As well-loved a song as it is, I have never heard it attempted at karaoke; if you're capable of starting a performance cold with the 17-note melismatic cartwheel that opens it, your name probably already starts with a B and ends with a Yoncé. —Douglas Wolk

Beyoncé: "Countdown"

On paper, “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” reads like an especially cheeky title coming from a band whose retro-gazing worship of classic-rock icons like the Beatles and Pink Floyd seemingly knows no bounds. But from Kevin Parker’s pained opening titular incantation, it’s immediately clear that the song is less about nostalgia than stagnation. The bruised emotional center of Tame Impala’s immaculate sophomore release, Lonerism , “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” presents psychedelia-as-paralysis, with each cycle through that crestfallen chorus intensifying the queasy, helpless feel of being trapped in a relationship that’s going nowhere. And through that, the scourge of psychedelia in the modern age is revealed: that is, it’s awfully hard to turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream when your life is going down the toilet. —Stuart Berman

Tame Impala: "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" (via SoundCloud )

"About to go Thriller , Mike Jackson." That was Drake way back in 2010 on "Over", the first single from his first album, Thank Me Later . Over the next few years, Aubrey "Drake" Graham's presence in pop music really did start to reach at least a straitened, post-YouTube level of Thriller -like inescapability. His appearances on not only singles from his own subsequent albums, 2011's Take Care and 2013's Nothing Was the Same , but also hits for Rihanna, DJ Khaled, T.I., Lil Wayne, Waka Flocka Flame, A$AP Rocky, Meek Mill, YG, and Romeo Santos — the list goes on — gave an air of prescience to Wayne's rapped 2009 boast, "And we gon' be alright if we put Drake on every hook." 

When Drake went his most musically Michael Jackson-like, he didn't go about it the usual way. He didn't quote from "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" (itself quoting Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa"), like Rihanna's 2007 smash "Don't Stop the Music". He didn't obviously point toward a specific song or songs, the way Daft Punk did with Chic's greatest hits on "Get Lucky", or Robin Thicke did with Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" on "Blurred Lines", to name two other zeitgeist-dominating 2013 tracks. And you can maybe see that in how Drake's song did on the charts: No. 34 for the year, right between Selena Gomez and Maroon 5. "Billie Jean" was not even his passing acquaintance.

But "Hold On, We're Going Home" is patient. It's subtle. It's a song with all singing and no overt Auto-Tune effects by a guy who despite some crooning has always supposedly been a rapper (well, at least since he stopped being a child actor)—and for as long as it's on, that's not even a big deal. There are no words you'd be embarrassed to play in front of your mother; also NBD. Sure, you can dance to it at weddings, but at 100 beats per minute, it's more "Human Nature" than "Beat It". It's Drake, in-house producers Nineteen85 and Noah "40" Shebib, and enigmatic guests Majid Jordan and that Canadian maple-syrup glide and those high-pitched "gooooin' home" backing vocals. It's—still—hot love and emotion, endlessly. Drake once said he makes his music strictly for driving at night. This is the ultimate of that. We're going home, and we haven't arrived yet. Hold on. —Marc Hogan

Drake: "Hold On, We're Going Home" [ft. Majid Jordan] (via SoundCloud )

Is this heaven or hell? It’s a pertinent question throughout Deerhunter’s fifth album, Halcyon Digest , but perhaps at no other point more than “Helicopter.” In the lyrics, Bradford Cox portrays the final throes of an ugly death lurch. The devil has arrived, the drugs are no longer working, and helicopters are circling like buzzards. “No one cares for me,” Cox sings. “I have minimal needs/ And now they are through with me.” Musically, however, “Helicopter” is all harps and gently lobbed beats, an aural invocation of a stroll through the clouds. It’s a beautiful song about being resigned to a grim fate. —Steven Hyden

Deerhunter: "Helicopter"

Here’s an album’s worth of ideas in just under 10 minutes, during which you will believe, calmly and absolutely, in a universe of pharaohs, pimps, cheetahs, and John Mayer guitar solos. “Pyramids” is that ruby-rare combination of ambitious and unpretentious, the stuff that has you toying with the word “classic” on first listen. And for a song about what we take from each other (above all else, from black women), it’s nothing if not empathetic—has there been a more nuanced portrayal of sex work in pop music?

Time moves at the sweaty, inscrutable pace of an almost-believable fever dream, and Ocean’s fine-tuned surreality comes with a gently disorienting sort of synesthesia—a damp huff of a fog machine, the milky perfume of lukewarm bath water. Around that intoxicating midsection where everything starts to melt, possibly including the talkbox, I close my eyes and recurringly see The Dream , a painstakingly fantastical painting of a jungle by Henri Rousseau (a man who’d never once left France): the glossy ferns and glinting lion eyes, a flash of a bird’s tail, and the curves of an unabashed reclining nude. For now, let’s call her Cleopatra. —Meaghan Garvey

Frank Ocean: "Pyramids" (via SoundCloud )

"They'll forget your name soon/ And won't nobody be to blame but yourself," Azealia Banks sings on 2011's viral hit "212". In a song packed with visceral taunts and low blows, this line felt like a throwaway, but it turned out to be prophetic—even Banks said it was directed at herself and not, as everyone had assumed, Nicki Minaj. But so what if "212" becomes the only Azealia Banks song we ever remember? It sounds as fresh and audacious now as it did three years ago. Over Lazy Jay's "Float My Boat", Banks swings slings and arrows, knots of slang delivered by multiple characters. And while “cunt” will still shock listeners in three, six, or nine years, it's Banks’ assonant, monosyllabic lyrics that give "212" delicious staying-power. "You're playing with your butter like your boo won’t true/ Cock the gun, too" doesn’t sound “of the moment”—it sounds like any moment from 2011 on. If the quick wordplay and multiple voices feel like Nicki to you, remember that the year's only other runaway hit by a female rapper was Minaj's "Super Bass", which was awfully soft compared to Banks' promise to ruin cunts everywhere. She hasn't given rappers much to worry about since "212" (except seeing her name in their Twitter mentions), but if this masterpiece of shit-talk encouraged at least one rapper to work less Pink and more blue, then that's worth remembering. —Jessica Suarez

Azealia Banks: "212" [ft. Lazy Jay]

From Gloria Gaynor to Alanis Morissette to Adele, pop music is full of scorned women either falling apart or raging redemptively at the sight of an ex. But rarely are they doing both at the same time, all while shimmying under the disco ball. Enter Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own”, the Body Talk Pt. 1 lead single that’s become the Swedish dance-pop queen’s banner anthem. “Does she love you better than I can?” recalls Morissette’s “Would she go down on you in a theater?” line from “ You Oughta Know ”, while the chorus hints at the resolve of Gaynor’s “ I Will Survive ”— but instead of embracing sisterhood, Robyn finds solace in a solo mission. The voyeurism of Adele’s “ Someone Like You ” factors into Robyn’s curiosity about the other woman—a feeling so overwhelming that she convinces herself it will provide closure, when it actually makes her feel worse. And yet, despite the cattiness, isolation, and desperation, Robyn walks out the other side of “Dancing on My Own” a stronger woman.

Balancing the pain of ugly truths with the reality that you’ll find a way to move past them is an incredible artistic feat that has as much to do with the song’s merciless onslaught of synths as it does Robyn’s lyrics. Nothing sounds quite like “Dancing on My Own”: Electronic clicking and ticking are layered atop one another at various tempos, ultimately creating the clipped sonic equivalent of a strobe light. An instant confidence boost takes hold as soon as the beat kicks in, even as Robyn falls apart—or perhaps, in part, because of it. We’ve all been there in some way, whether it’s as the jilted ex giving in to Facebook-stalking urges or even in the role of “always the best friend, never the girlfriend.” The ubiquitous presence of “Dancing on My Own” in pop culture over the past four years—in TV shows like “Girls” and on barroom DJs’ playlists—is a real-talk reminder of life’s low points, and the stunning celebration of overcoming them. —Jillian Mapes

Robyn: "Dancing on My Own" (via SoundCloud )

Have you and your significant other had “the talk” about “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe”? You might find out the hard way that the title isn’t going to be the sticking point. It’s the words right before it: “sometimes I need to be alone.” Now, every healthy relationship requires each partner to carve out some space for self-care, that isn’t too much to ask. And because Kendrick Lamar has something of a messiah complex, he fills the verses with loopy conscious rap moralizing about the radio and materialism and how those can obscure the vision of your third eye into your true soul. Or something like that.

But then the chorus abruptly asks for a more impure kind of purity, one that exists outside the spiritual realm—sometimes, when you get your drinks and your music just right, the resultant vibe is a power so incredible and fleeting, you want to keep it all to yourself. In fact, another person can only ruin it. Are you really going to tell a loved one how much you relate to that? It’s bad enough to get a quick check with all disrespect saying there are times where you’ll be #4 at best behind “my drink,” “my music” and “my vibe.” How about being told that you’re such a distant #4 that any attempt at protest can only be met with a response of “bitch, don’t kill my vibe”?

And Kendrick Lamar is much better with words than you, so what chance do the rest of us have? Well, to me, what’s amazing is how the song that most successfully presents Kendrick Lamar in the way he sees himself—the foremost vessel for the incomparable power of hip-hop—is the one where you really don’t have to pay attention to his rapping. Let’s not forget that the only person who believes in Kendrick Lamar as much as himself is pretty much a billionaire and you could hear Sounwave’s blinding, gilded production here as Dr. Dre outsourcing a tribute to an empire built on expensive headphones. This track is AT&T Stadium, Virgin America, “YOU GET A CAR...AND YOU GET A CAR!” , where we’re all the beneficiaries of an extremely rich person’s idea of altruism, to spare no expense in a show of faith to the customer. And that really gets the point across when you share “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” with your partner—“me time” is this languid, this indulgent and this luxurious. When “sometimes I need to be alone” is expressed that way, those are things anyone can understand. —Ian Cohen

Kendrick Lamar: "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe"

In the 1980s, every teensploitation flick from Times Square to Night of the Comet to Ferris Bueller's Day Off treated the city as some sort of divine space: a coming-of-age backdrop where misfit kids could congregate with others like themselves, discover new desires and freedoms, and ultimately escape suburban drudgery both pre- and post-apocalyptic. That idea drives this towering single from M83’s intensely cinematic and loosely narrative 2011 album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming , which seems to locate its truest inspiration in these old flicks and their heart-on-sleeve naivety. (In fact, the covers for both the album and this single allude subtly to that period with what may be a nod to Juan Piquer Simon’s ’83 b-movie Los Nuevos Terrestriales , better known to MSTies as Pod People ). “Midnight City” is the soundtrack for an imaginary film about driving through an urban canyon at night: “The city is my church,” Anthony Gonzalez sings. “It wraps me in its sparkling twilight.” 

M83’s nostalgia is personal and very particular, but the music makes it sound universal: The rhythm section manages to locate a groove in an XXL pocket, and the synths bark and whir to craft a fanfare that towers like a skyscraper. Upon the album’s release, much was made of Gonzalez’s three-year hiatus, his quote about Hurry Up being “very very very epic,” and even his disclosure of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness as his double-album blueprint. Just two years later, those aspects of the album have largely faded away, leaving the music sounding freshly grandiose. “Midnight City” in particular has lost none of its size and sparkle, especially when that saxophone enters on the outro. At that point it’s clear the song is nowhere near as overwhelming as the teenage emotions Gonzalez is trying to convey. —Stephen M. Deusner

M83: "Midnight City" (via SoundCloud )

The salvation of Kanye started small as a pinhole spotlight shining on a single piano key. Wearing a blood-red blazer and novelty-sized Horus pendant at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards , Kanye clinks the opening note like a silver knife on crystal glass before a toast, steadily, at a resting heart rate of 43 beats per minute. Then the Rick James sample descends. Like only the best Kanye samples, it’s weighted from time, warped and ironic. James’ disembodied voice, once an Icarian, cocaine-fueled yawp of wonder is now the ghost of the ego. It stereo-pans from one channel to the other, circling the track like a wolf. “Look at ya! Look at ya!” It’s a warning that should Kanye not check himself, only a mortal's death awaits. It’s imperative that he save himself from himself, and he looks to no one but Kanye for salvation. Thus began Kanye’s own self-sustaining resurrection ecosystem. 

Every prophet has to have his “Runaway” moment, though—an appeal to the masses. It would become Kanye’s first sermon in a series of many sermons that he would deliver following the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy —on radio, on stage, on camera, anywhere. It’s not so much a mea culpa, it’s a pardon. He washes the feet of anyone who’s done some caddish behavior; anyone who’s been addicted to a hoodrat or sent a dick pic or some such. Of course, the toasts to douchebags, assholes, scumbags, and jerkoffs are placeholders for Kanye, Kanye, Kanye, and Kanye. A song about cleansing the ego that becomes so solipsistic is part and parcel what makes “Runaway” such a emblematic, genius pop artifact.

And Kanye knew it, too. He elevated “Runaway” to the most lavish level possible. He commissioned an original Condo artwork for the single, depicting a placid-looking ballerina dressed in a black tutu, just like the ones that danced for Kanye in the high-concept, 34-minute film that accompanied the song. This was, he wanted to be certain, art. In his eyes, if everyone could see “Runaway” inside a gilded frame among classic art signifiers, then, yes, you could believe the final three minutes of the song were the baptism and the martyrdom all in one. Through his vocoder, emoting and bleating and bleeding, you could finally believe he was aware of his faults, a regular man, just like you or me. You would remember this myth when a few years later he returned to earth and proclaimed: “I am a god.” Who doesn’t want a little scumbag in their savior? —Jeremy D. Larson

Kanye West: "Runaway" [ft. Pusha T]

“Round and Round” is not just the song that catapulted Ariel Pink from shut-in CD-R savant to festival-level phenom ( however reluctantly )—its history offers the clearest insight into the method behind his madness. The song’s original source is obscure even by Pink’s outsider standards: It first surfaced as a severely decayed demo—known as “ Frontman/Hold On (I’m Calling) ”—in 2009, when fans who ordered merchandise from Pink’s site were rewarded with a customized compilation disc of rarities from his bottomless reserve of home recordings. (Like so many of Pink’s early efforts, its precise date of origin is unknown.) In this primitive, almost inaudible form, the song amounts to just its chorus, which bookends a passage of wandering guitar-noodling before abruptly cutting out, like some AM golden-oldies station fading out of reception during a lonely overnight interstate drive. 

But the song’s eventual fate belies the popular perception of Pink as the proudly impulsive imperfectionist. Sure, he may have shat out enough songs in the early 2000s to top off a landfill, but for his 2010 4AD debut, Before Today —his first album to be recorded in a proper studio—he savvily salvaged and reshaped some of his most durable scraps, transforming them from half-formed remembrances of great songs into actual great songs. The throwaway hook of “Frontman/Hold On (I’m Calling)” is promoted to the feature attraction of “Round and Round,” but Pink shrewdly keeps it close to its chest like a seasoned card shark, waiting for just the right moment to drop it. 

Where his pre-4AD albums took the form of randomized compilations, “Round and Round” unfolds like a strategically choreographed parade of Pink’s various whims, rolling out sardonic Stevie Wonder quotes , icy new-waved funk, ringing rotary telephones, and play-by-play meta-commentary before that titanic chorus appears out of nowhere two minutes in and sends the song skyrocketing to the top of the 1980 Billboard AC chart. Hypnotic and startling in equal measure, “Round and Round” remains the gold-standard exemplar of Pink’s peculiar genius: his best songs bear the instant familiarity of something you swear you’ve heard before, but also the dislocating confusion of never being able to place the source. —Stuart Berman

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: "Round and Round"

If “Oblivion” says anything about our collective psyche at the midway point of a decade already defined by seismic, globe-altering revolutions, it’s that the personal will always be political. The song recounts a specific sexual assault (“One of the most shattering experiences of my life,” Grimes, who was born in Vancouver as Claire Boucher, told SPIN in 2012) by describing the psychic fallout: “And never walk about after dark/ It’s my point of view/ Because someone could break your neck/ Coming up behind you always coming and you’d never have a clue,” she lisps in her high, pinched voice. It’s a dazzling, paralyzing performance, in part because Boucher sounds almost playful, and in part because the skronking behind her—the song’s springy, propulsive synth line was one of 2012’s most unforgettable—indicates something other than victimization. “See you on a dark night,” Boucher repeats. 

The song’s video , directed by Emily Kai Bock, features a tiny, pink-haired Grimes lip-syncing “Oblivion” at a McGill football game (and later at a motorcross rally), wearing skeleton gloves and clutching a plastic boom box. There aren’t many women hanging in the stands besides Boucher; one, darting up behind her, swats at the hood of Boucher’s sweatshirt, a vaguely combative gesture that somehow seems more goofy than aggressive. On the field, a squad of taut-bellied cheerleaders, their hair pulled back with candy-colored bows, soar forth and land. Grimes, mouthing the lyrics to “Oblivion,” dances the way people dance when no one is looking: a desexualized, mostly arrhythmic twitching that does not seem to be for the benefit of anyone else at all. 

The particular kind of masculinity that gets amplified by organized sporting events—the same feral, drooling aggression Bill Buford made infamous in Among the Thugs , his harrowing account of hooliganism among English soccer fans—would be an easy target for a feminist with a video camera, but Grimes is received warmly by the crowd. In that sense, it is a triumph—of perseverance, if not humanity—and it feels consistent with her mission. The subversion of expectation is a part of Grimes’s founding aesthetic, and she frequently marries more defiant genres like noise and punk with propulsive pop production, outfitting her dissent in studio glimmer.  The melody can be so sweet as to feel bubblegum, and when Boucher sings a bit like “I will wait forever”–a line that always jumps out–“Oblivion” starts to seem like a very different kind of lament. 

But what “Oblivion” ultimately offers is victory. It’s the sound of one woman turning personal devastation into not just a career-making single, but a lasting anthem of transformation.  —Amanda Petrusich