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In Year in Review 2016

Year In ReView: Vanyaland’s Top 25 songs of 2016

By Vanyalandon

This was an odd year for music. As Vanyaland senior writer Daniel Brockman details in his annual Year In Pop roundup, the two-way highway of comings and goings produced a wealth of in-crisis pop, solemn rock, and schizophrenic hip-hop alongside a cruel abundance of iconic deaths and life-lessons from rock's dinosaur guard. And as this Vanyaland contributor list proves, it was another wildly eclectic and eccentric year of sound, proving that genre restriction is truly dead for those who still actually care. For our Top 25 Songs of 2016, we pitched and polled our writing staff about their favorite tracks of the year, then condensed each list for a composite ranking. Below are the results, with the song's nominator doing the honors of telling us why the song cracked the list in the first place. It may not be perfect, but it's ours, and it's worth more than just taking a Chance on.

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21. Sleaford Mods, “TCR”

Vanyaland favorites Sleaford Mods continue their reign as the most important band in the UK with this little ditty, taken from their October-released T.C.R. EP. It’s a bit of a holdover until next spring when the Nottingham duo drop the full-length follow-up to last year’s Key Markets. Here on the title track, it’s a sort of sideways tribute to the toy racing game Total Control Racing that Mods mouthpiece Jason Williamson and music provider Andrew Fearn used to play as kids in the ’80s. As shown in the video, the two player game has the players jockeying for the lead around a cheap plastic track which propels the race cars in a circle. Backed by a beat that sounds like it could’ve come from one of the first two Strokes albums, Williamson rails against, “The trappings of luxury can’t save you from the nail-biting boredom of repetitive brain injury,” and spits out disgust for hipsters and bemoaning the inability to go out to the pub and enjoy a pint. His working class banter on “T.C.R.” is in fine form, smarmy, impatient and saying whatever partially baked thought pops into his head. Williamson is a vocal opponent of Brexit, so he’s surely got a mad cache of angry, lyrical whimsy built up. We can’t wait.

— Michael Christopher

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