fbpx

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

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.

Prev6 of 25Next
Swipe or use your ← → (arrow) keys

20. Lady Gaga, “Perfect Illusion”

“Perfect Illusion” wasn’t the new Lady Gaga music we expected — or wanted, per se — but it’s the music we got. On the pop weirdo’s fifth album Joanne, Gaga delved into what her music would be like if she weren’t famous, and instead was just an all-American gal touting from dive bar to dive bar. Lead single “Perfect Illusion” is an outlier on the country-centric opus, and while a tad on the repetitive side, the disco thumper steals the glam rock show. Gaga tells the tale of a tangled love affair gone awry — a bad romance, if you will — but drops her usual dramatic and grotesque façade in favor of stormy ’80s-ready hooks. With Mark Ronson bringing the heat on the guitar, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker on drums, and Bloodpop nailing the synths, Gaga makes the kind of all-star comeback no one saw in the cards. Even if you crave the ol’ gothic pop The Fame Monster days, prepare for the repercussions of PI: the way Gaga comically pronounces love as “laaaav” in the chorus will leave Little Monsters deliberately mispronouncing the noun until the next LG era.

— Victoria Wasylak

Prev6 of 25Next
Swipe or use your ← → (arrow) keys