Editor’s Note: Welcome to Vanyaland’s Year in ReView coverage for 2021. It’s been a year, huh? Luckily, we’ve had incredible art across the spectrum of music, comedy, and film to help prevent us from going totally insane. As we raise a glass to the year that was, check out all our 2021 Year In ReView coverage as it surfaces throughout the week and into the holidays.
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It’s pretty much impossible to do a comprehensive year-in-review roundup in 2021. The volume of great new music out this year was absolutely mind-numbing, and maybe for the first time in a long time, all these Best Of lists cranked out by publications of all sizes, demographics, and readerships will be hard pressed to mirror one another. Those who aren’t opting for the obvious should show a pretty diverse collection of music fir for year-end prestige. Everyone sure has their favorites, and we certainly have ours; below are 21 of Vanyaland’s favorite national songs of 2021, the companion piece to our 21 favorite Boston homegrown songs, and it reflects the coverage we provided over the past 12 months. This list could have easily been 210 songs, and we’d still feel fairly incomplete, leaving out so many ace fucking tunes, but these were the jams that had us moving the most, and helped not only soundtrack our year, but also color it in bright neon pink across these digital pages.
Baby Queen, “Raw Thoughts”
It’s kinda fitting that Baby Queen’s “Raw Thoughts” leads off this list (which is admittedly alphabetical), because back on January 14 this kaleidoscopic dose of alt-pop euphoria felt like the first truly great song of 2021. It would go on to be featured on the South African-born, London-based creative force’s September mixtape The Yearbook, setting a remarkable tone for the year ahead and continuing Baby Queen’s rise. Inspired by a sense of newfound freedom after a bad breakup, “Raw Thoughts” displays the type of real-life lyrical wizardry from Bella Latham that’s tough to authenticate these days. She’s partying, she’s hooking up, she’s experiencing happiness and sadness all at once; and she’s writing some razor-sharp pop music fit for all our highs, lows, and the never-ending in-betweens.
Beach House, “Superstar”
They say no one listens to albums anymore, so when a band readies one for release, it’s important to expand that life cycle in the name of listener attention. Back in November, Beach House detailed their forthcoming eighth studio album Once Twice Melody, set for February 18 release, but not before the LP is released in four separate chapters broken down to EP-sized doses. The first was led by the title track, which emerged as lovely Beach House through-and-through, but those who kept listening found a glistening brilliance in the second track. The hypnotic “Superstar” is a wildly magical six-minute dream-pop odyssey that rewarded any listener who dipped deeper than just the single. In a career filled with bright spots, this might be Beach House’s true high point. What a tune.
Bloc Party, “Traps”
One of the worst things a music writer can do is herald a band’s supposed “return to form,” as if that group’s prior, more recent output existed somewhere arbitrarily outside their own creative context. But we’ll be damned if Bloc Party’s November single “Traps,” the first taste of the English band’s upcoming April 2022 album Alpha Games, didn’t transport us back to the glorious last-party days of the mid- to late-2000s. Representing Kele Okereke & Co.’s most incendiary and explosive track in quite some time, “Traps” is a punchy, tumultuous single that slots somewhere in a playlist of their bridge era between iconic debut album Silent Alarm and the oft-misunderstood followup, A Weekend In The City (which holds up a lot better than you think, you sad bastard). Seemingly getting better with each listen, “Traps” is an absolute ripper of a tune fueled by the high-octane post-punk and propulsive percussion that made Bloc Party so damn great back in the aughts. It makes us wish indie dance nights were still a thing.
Charli XCX, “Good Ones”
Pop music, and fiery electro-pop in particular, had a hell of a Summer 2021 — just see high-gloss bangers from Banks, Sigrid, and Kim Petras that also shine up this list. But the queen had her say in September, and as usual, she said it loud and proud. Charli XCX threw down the alt-pop gauntlet with a new wave- and Italo disco-inspired rager called “Good Ones,” and despite clocking in at a Spotify-minded 2:16 runtime (repeated plays = more moneys) this one truly had it all: “The first single of my new chapter embraces all that my life has to offer in today’s world — fame, glamour, inner demons, and global hits,” Charli declared. Produced by Oscar Holte, “Good Ones” is a little bit Laura Branigan’s “Self-Control,” a dash of Stacey Q, and full of modern electro firepower that vaults Charli back to the forefront of pop music. The stunning high-fashion video directed by Hannah Lux Davis, placing Charli at a funeral scene lamenting all the ones that got away, gave us a proper runway visual to match the ferocity.
Crimson Bloom, “The Madhouse”
There’s a certain point early on in “The Madhouse,” the smooth July banger from British combo Crimson Bloom, where the groove just hits on a different kind of level. Capturing and caressing a propulsive strut like some mix of Lightning Seeds and Happy Mondays, the indie club-minded dance track delivers on the promise made by the band to reconnect us back to the baggy era of English nightlife, darting just beyond the Britpop and Cool Britannia wave that’s crashed our nostalgia shores in recent years and spinning a late-’80s and early-’90s psychedelic beat that feels pure and simple at each turn. But a shimmering layer of sonics and dash of Madchester makes this quite the joyous listen, and while the three companion tracks on The Madhouse EP dangle through aisles of indie and jangle-pop, it’s the title cut that transports us to a time we never actually experienced but forever wish we had. It’s less a revival push and more a reconnection rush. And it’s devilishly great.
The Goon Sax, “In the Stone”
If 2021 was such a bad year for the album format, then what do we say to the person who 10 years from now discovers Mirror II, the July LP from Australian trio The Goon Sax, and allows it to change their life? It should only take a few seconds of album opener “In the Stone” for hypnosis to settle in, and though the record possesses nine other tracks that skip across genres like a gently tossed rock across a pond’s reflective surface, it’s this one that truly showcases the band’s effortless brand of detached cool (second song “Psychic” is a close, uh, second). The low vocals of Louis Forster, who sounds a bit like the departed Chuck Mosley here, are offset by the heavenly Riley Jones, and together the pair harmonize a conversational, but gravitational, tone that feels like you’re in the room with them. While it’s almost impossible to describe The Goon Sax’s music through genre restrictions, their band moniker is more easily explained, as it’s apparently a play-on-words that combines the saxophone with Aussie slang for boxed wine, a goon sack.
Hatchie, “This Enchanted”
Welcome back, Hatchie. After laying low for the past two years — and honestly, who can blame her? — Harriette Pilbeam returned in September with a fresh record deal and an incredible new single, signing to Secretly Canadian and offering up a swirling fit of beautiful bliss called “This Enchanted.” The Australian artist turned heads and ears and everything attached to them with a revved-up dose of skygaze pop that seems to expand and contract with each repeated listen. Lots of folx over the past 30 years have tried to create “something dancey, but shoegaze,” as Pilbeam described this joint at the time, but few ever succeeded quite like this. “This Enchanted” is also a song about falling in love, and that’s exactly what we’ve done here. How meta.
Hayley Kiyoko, “Found My Friends”
By the time late-April rolled around, our lives were slowly returning to some semblance of normal, and we looked ahead to the summer as one of rekindled friendships and renewed social experiences. Needless to say, it’s now December, and we’re still trapped in the glacial pandemic age, but the warmer seasons did bring a lot of us back together in various IRL ways. And as we ventured out to see our lovers, friends, and family, we had Hayley Kiyoko’s white-hot single “Found My Friends” bumping from the cantina to the marina. “Found My Friends” is a swirling mega-jam all about self-reliance and finding friendship with your own self, and touches on the online connectivity we’ve endured over the past 21 months. But it was also hard to not let Kiyoko’s electronic-pop dazzler be the song we listened to as we got dressed, dolled up, and ready for a night out — just like we used to in the taken-for-granted Before Times. If we learned anything over the past two years, it’s that friendships make life worth living.
Indigo de Souza, “Hold U”
We’re quite smitten with Indigo De Souza’s August album Any Shape You Take, and in particular its glistening single “Hold U”, which displays the type of indie-R&B cool previously heard in our fka TWIGS and Shura records. The North Carolina artist is on a fast track to fame, and there are a few other tracks on her debut LP that could have appeared here (see “Pretty Pictures” and “Kill Me”). “I wanted this album to give a feeling of shifting with and embracing change,” she says. “These songs came from a turbulent time when I was coming to self-love through many existential crises and shifts in perspective.” Expect many years of greatness to come.
Japanese Breakfast, “Be Sweet”
This past year was, by a large, a pretty miserable experience. But there were a few bursts of joy tucked in, popping up unexpectedly, amongst our collective daily angst. One of those surfaced in March when Japanese Breakfast rewarded us with “Be Sweet,” a buoyant blast of indie-pop that set a tone for Michelle Zauner’s third Japanese Breakfast album, July’s Jubilee. “After spending the last five years writing about grief, I wanted our follow up to be about joy,” Zauner said. “For me, a third record should feel bombastic and so I wanted to pull out all the stops for this one. I wrote ‘Be Sweet’ with Jack Tatum from Wild Nothing a few years ago. I’ve been holding onto it for so long and am so excited to finally put it out there.” It hit just when we needed it most.
Johnny Dynamite & the Bloodsuckers, “Bats in the Woods”
If this list was ranked (it’s not), then Johnny Dynamite & the Bloodsuckers’ breathtaking May single “Bats in the Woods” very likely would have grabbed the top slot, and definitely performed no worse than Top 3. A captivating track from the Brooklyn artist, co-produced by Trey Frey of Dynamite’s Born Losers Records label mates Korine, “Bats in the Woods” is a feverish retro-pop blast of cool warmth that feels rather timeless. The sonic callbacks to the ’80s are inescapable, but there’s just as much Hysteria-era Def Leppard lurking under the surface as the synth-pop bands that usually get cited here, and Dynamite’s heart-on-sleeve emotion — which was evident all over his breakout sophomore June album Sleeveless — pairs well with the track’s magnetic pull. At a time when nostalgia for that particular decade has thrust us down the nerdy neon halls of silly revisionist history, Dynamite’s work and efforts come off as pure and sincere, the type of call-to-action that inspires. We’ve hyped Dynamite’s knack for musical story telling in other features — hell, he’s directly inspired by the illustrative work of his grandfather, acclaimed comic book artist Pete Morisi, with his moniker passed down from Morisi’s famed anti-hero detective character — but what we have here under the skin and sweat is just one hell of a pop song, the type heard in an teen adventure movie just as some real shit is about to go down. Ready or not here it comes.
Johnny Marr, “Spirit Power And Soul”
Leave it to Johnny Marr to once again be ahead of the game. Like Beach House, the legendary Manchester musician and Smiths guitarist is rolling out his new album in smaller, attention-span-minded pieces, and the first blast of Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 hit in August through an energized electro-rock banger called “Spirit Power and Soul.” An extension of his increasingly brilliant solo material and a callback to his Electronic days, “Spirit Power and Soul” is a pulsating ripper that continues to push Marr forward with his own sense of sound, class, and creativity. “‘Spirit Power And Soul’ is a kind of mission statement,” Marr said. “I had an idea about an electro sound with gospel feeling, in my own words… an electro soul anthem.” The man pulled it off. Because of course he can.
Kim Petras, “Future Starts Now”
Before she dazzled up the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade or went viral at the MTV Europe Music Awards by taking a stand against bigotry in host country Hungary, Kim Petras got the motherfucking dance party started in August with a glitzy high-octane banger called “Future Starts Now.” The fiery track came with news the German-born artist had signed to Republic Records, and the future started right then and there with a pure Euro party jam that called back to the glory days of late-’00s blog house and ’80s-pop new wave, all while maintaining a glossy coat of modernity that Petras wears in style. “Future Starts Now” was inspired by the music she’d hear as a child on her family trips to Paris, and it elevated Petras from cult sensation to global force. The escapist vibes align closer to 2019’s Clarity record than the darker sounds of spooky season opus TURN OFF THE LIGHT, and people of all sensations, we are here for it. Bow to the new royal alt-pop icon.
MØ, “Brad Pitt”
Some of our favorite jams of 2021 were completely unexpected, and when we awoke the morning of November 16, we had no idea we’ve be served a potential SOTY contender from MØ. But that’s what we got from the Danish artist born Karen Marie Aagaard Ørsted Andersen as she delivered two new tracks from her forthcoming January album Motordrome, including a slow-burner synthwave cruiser called “Brad Pitt.” Read the end of that sentence again! While the other accompanying track, “Goosebumps,” acted more like a ballad and came with a visual directed by longtime collaborator Rob Sinclair (David Byrne’s American Utopia) and Lewis Knaggs, it was “Brad Pitt” that got our senses tingling and our minds daydreaming. We’re not sure if the actor has responded to the song, but this one has us spinning around in a beautiful haze.
Nina Nesbitt, “Life’s a Bitch”
The soundtrack for Drive turned 10 this year, and it’s clear that we’re still feeling its synth-pop tremors pulsating across the electronic- and alt-pop landscapes. In September, Nina Nesbitt emanated those ultra vibes through an effervescent tune called “Life’s A Bitch” that’s anything but. Dubbed “L.A.B.” in case your parents peep your playlist, “Life’s A Bitch” is the perfect follow up to July’s hazy “Summer Fling,” and was co-written by the Scottish artist alongside production duo Jack & Coke. At its glowing core, “Life’s A Bitch” is really a lovely twirl of retro-synth and magnetic modern pop, all about the highs and lows that come with surviving on the daily. When Nesbitt offers up “I don’t let it get me down / Life’s like a bitch, I hate her but I love her,” well, hey, it’s hard not to relate in a time when good days and bad days have been replaced by good hours and bad hours. “‘Life’s A Bitch’ is an ‘80s inspired, post-2020, driving-your-car-through-a tunnel-at-night song,” Nesbitt says. “A ‘dancing while crying, and smiling through the tears’ moment. It’s about the unpredictability of life, the ups and downs, being your own worst enemy and your own best friend. The chorus is an empowering mantra for powering through the turbulence of life.” Nina has us on cruise control.
Olivia Rodrigo, “brutal”
Yeah, sure, Olivia Rodrigo absolutely owned 2021, and her face would probably be atop this article as the featured image if we didn’t assume she’d lead every other Best of 2021 recap from here to Murrieta. But a funny thing happened back when she released the omnipresent SOUR back in May, and it caught a lot of (probably older) folx off-guard: The album kicked off with a spiky alt-rock rager dubbed “brutal,” which sounded like… LeTigre and Elastica?!?! Say whatever you will about Rodrigo and her style or her path to fame, but “brutal” and its teenage angst and vertical charm is an absolute crusher, the type of jam you’d put on a mixtape for your crush when you were 16. We suppose a playlist will suffice.
Sigrid, “Burning Bridges”
There’s just something about Sigrid that gets us moving. And while our standom is well documented, we’re still rising from our chairs every time the Norwegian alt-pop artist releases another banger. In August we were kissing the stars once again as Sigrid dropped an absolute fireball in “Burning Bridges”, a song that recalls the glory days of Lady Gaga’s Fame era and is all about looking at a stale relationship and saying “two tears in a bucket fuck it.” Sigrid says this joint was “inspired by one of the toughest things I’ve been through. It’s a song that’s about the point where you just have to say in a relationship, ‘you know what, let’s just finish this’. That moment of enough is enough, and you need a clean break.” Hell, even Charli XCX was all up on this one, premiering “Burning Bridges” as her Hottest Record on BBC Radio 1 on release day and declaring that it “goes super hard, it’s amazing!” We dubbed it a Song of the Year contender then, and here it appears now. Break up with your lame-ass would-be lover and let Sigrid take you out to the places that deserve you.
Sinead O’Brien, “Kid Stuff”
One of our absolute favorite new music discoveries of 2021 was Sinead O’Brien, the fast-talking Irish post-punk poet who dropped an undertow of a tune in April called “Kid Stuff.” O’Brien’s sharp lyricisms and spoken-word delivery has a sort of hypnotic quality to it, and she doesn’t so much speak out her lines as she does surround herself in them and allow each word to swirl and shake before it drops into our understood definition. They burst out of her headspace with such precise urgency, it would be starling if it wasn’t so damn comforting in its confrontational nature. O’Brien is an absolute treasure whose stock will no doubt rise once we’re allowed to fully have live music again and artists from across the Atlantic are able to come show off their talents on our shore’s stages, though we can’t decide if we’d rather see her perform in some dank smoke-filled shithole lounge with 15 people or the larger pristine venues for which she’s destined. Either way, “Kid Stuff” is less a song than it is a rapture, and it’s impossible to ig-nore.
Velvet Starlings, “Technicolour Shakedown”
There’s a lot of pop shine, a lot of glossy beats on this list. Now welcome Velvet Starlings, the Los Angeles trio who are making a beautifully noisy racket with each rambunctious release. Every now and then a garage rock band kicks down the doldrum doors of summer and injects us with newfound energy. That band in July was this Los Angeles outfit, a fuzzed-out psychotronic rock and roll freakout title track to September’s Technicolour Shakedown that got our skeletal bones bouncing off the padded walls of our quarantine bedrooms. “The track is an anthemic ode to going out and to the live music experience,” says Velvet Starlings’ Christian Gisborne, “and colourfully describing the energy of catching your favourite band on the local scene and being packed in a venue ‘like sardines’ — and loving every minute of it!” That’s certainly a feeling we’ve all missed dearly in the pandemic age, and while the live experience is slowly coming back into focus, the recorded material on Velvet Starlings’ new disc seems to have enough proper throwback to gritty ’60s guitar-rock swagger to help us break a sweat no matter where we may be — from now until armageddon.
Wet Leg, “Chaise Longue”
As you may have read, heard, or realized by now, everyone’s Best of 2021 list is seemingly different from the next, a testament to not only all the great music released this year, but also the fact that so much great music was released, and how the streaming era, despite its historic struggles with payout, placed every bit of released music in the year-in-review conversation. But while every Best Of list may be different, there is some overlap, and Wet Leg’s buzzing summer post-punk single “Chaise Longue” may be the song that appears of the most lists overall. The British indie-pop duo, who call the Isle of Wight home, were something of a ’21 phantom phenom, the type of buzz band you’d bring up to your friend at the bar and see if you could out-tastemake the tastemaker in your life. Then that friend would unzip their Harrington and reveal they showed up in a fucking Wet Leg t-shirt.
Years & Years, “Starstruck”
Ladies dominated electro-pop this year, but our boy Olly Alexander held his own in a busy field by churning out a handful of sensational Years & Years singles. But none were better than April’s “Starstruck,” a glistening pop jam that came fresh off Years & Years’ breathtaking cover of Pet Shop Boys’ ’80s cult classic “It’s A Sin”, where Alexander wiped clean the dramatic synth-pop sheen of the OG and added some solemn gravitas appropriate for the HBO Max show of the same name. But here, the glitz and the glamour enriched in Years & Years’ sonic DNA is once again cranked to deafening volumes, and because it’s a song about reclaiming the human connection — something a lot of us have lost over the past year — we just desperately want to have a dance party about it. “Starstruck” is a little bit blog house, a little bit Justin Timberlake, and a whole lot Years & Years. It certainly spiced up our year — and hey, we gotta show some love to the boys at some point.