The rising piano chatter sits halfway between house music and Bruce Hornsby, and by the time the shaky beat kicks in, it’s turned into the ecstasy-laced optimism of the Stone Roses. Votes from our critics were split across six different songs, but edging out in front was Not, a masterpiece of indie rock with a savage truth at its heart. From catchy tunes to Billboard chart toppers, the top pop songs of 2019 feature music from artists, like Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Selena Gomez, Dua Lipa, and more. Not only is it the most popular song of 2019, spending a record-breaking 19 consecutive weeks at No 1 in the US, plus 10 weeks in the UK Top 3, Old Town Road is also the most 2019 song of 2019. Ahead of our countdown of the resulting 50 best albums of the year, we’re kicking off with a list of the 20 best songs. From catchy tunes to Billboard chart toppers, the top pop songs of 2019 feature music from artists, like Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Selena Gomez, Dua Lipa, and more. UPDATE: Check out the top pop hits of 2020! BBT, The pressure of expectations is a topic that pop stars, jaded after their ascent, often end up visiting. BBT. He voices someone “struggling with anxiety”, who is freaked out by a tutting checkout girl and thinks a busker is using Wonderwall to swear at them. Meanwhile, Latin pop, indie rock, country, and hip-hop kept evolving like crazy and producing exciting new voices, from rising Atlanta titan Da Baby to Aussie truth-sayer Stella Donnelly. But the brilliance of the echoing electro-funk backing offers a route out: you can always dance through a crisis. BBT, It’s hard to remember any self-made star having such a swift and well-deserved rise to the top as Rosalía, who already commands outsized influence given her relatively brief career to date (see: Camila Cabello’s second album). LS, Motivation is the pop equivalent of an Olympics-winning gymnastics routine: Normani serves take-it-or-leave-it cool, effortless vocal workouts and nonchalant cheerleader authority on the Ariana Grande co-write. Elegant and valedictory, it’s a masterpiece of west coast songwriting classicism: “I guess I’m signing off after all,” she gasps, and a rich, rusty guitar solo soars out of the gate, languid and carefree as a skateboarder sailing along the boardwalk. Racist violence is close at hand. The backing, an idle but quietly feverish patter of garage rock, also tries to play it cool but can’t quite manage it, its main instrumental melody searching up and down for a foothold. LS, It’s a misconception that tumultuous political times produce better music, but relative prosperity is certainly responsible for its fair share of drivel. We want to hear from you! So did its follow-up, About Work the Dancefloor, prompting the label to push her album to 2020 to give the singles time to breathe. “Didn’t I do it for you?” she asks an ex-lover, as glacial piano and a pocked beat suggest someone circling a precious museum exhibit and gesturing at its impressive facets: what kind of moron could disregard such beauty? This year she released an embarrassment of brilliant one-off singles that show off her wide-ranging prowess, from uncompromising experimentation (A Palé and Aute Cuture) to nimble pop flexes such as Con Altura. It was then boosted by an identity-politics controversy after it was deemed not country enough for the country charts – the subsequent addition of the none-more-country Billy Ray Cyrus for the remix was a rebuttal of utter mic-drop magnificence. Who decides?” wonders Chris, poetically losing control of her own narrative; Charli, meanwhile, is “just now realising they don’t care”, and, chillingly, she could mean anyone. BBT, Self-destructive behaviour wouldn’t be so common if there were no thrill involved: the fantasy that your desires might pan out after all, even though you know there’s not a hope in hell. album, which opened with this track, Fat White Family moved to Sheffield to get off heroin – but, it transpired, this merely meant not injecting it. BBT, With two albums in 2019 stuffed full of instantly classic songs – Forgotten Eyes, Cattails, Shoulders, Orange – Brooklyn’s Big Thief are the band of the year. The result is the most original pop song of the year. Sign up for our newsletter. Dave confronts one ill after another like he can scarcely believe his own words: colonialism, social mobility, media sensationalism … but ultimately, there’s such pride as he considers his hair, his history, his skin. LS, Unlike the three tracks from his album Psychodrama that reached the Top 10, Black scraped the Top 40, and – being a bleak, jaded treatise on contemporary racism – it stuck out like a sore thumb amid the poppy stuff on daytime Radio 1. Read our countdown of the 50 best songs of 2019, from Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" to Vampire Weekend's "Harmony Hall" and beyond. But they are rarely this tortured. Not only is it the most popular song of 2019, spending a record-breaking 19 consecutive weeks at No 1 in the US, plus 10 weeks in the UK Top 3, Old Town Road is … Every part, from the drawled verses to the hearty chorus and taunting bridge, sounds amazing hollered from the back of a car, karaoke bar, or Shetland pony ride. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. Elton John's Eight-Disc 'Jewel Box' Rewrites the Story of His Epic Career, 4 Ways You Can Tell Trump’s Election Lawsuits Are a Sham, Watch Bruce Springsteen Honor Vietnam Vets on ‘The Wall’, 2020 CMA Awards: The Complete Winners List, Sinead O’Connor to Enter Yearlong Trauma and Addiction Treatment Program, Joe Diffie, Nineties Country’s ‘Pickup Man,’ Dead at 61 From Coronavirus. “The rules are kinda different when you’re baddin’ up the game,” indeed. makes a purchase. Luckily, he had Ladbroke Grove up his sleeve. U The single re-entered the top ten on the week ending December 14, 2019. You can listen to all 593 songs that were voted for in our playlist, Last modified on Wed 12 Aug 2020 06.24 EDT. Even as Lykke Li catalogues the torments doled out by her would-be lover, the distant steel pan chime, sparkling disco chorus and sugar-spun melodies maintain the glimmering mirage of possibility. But what if we smooth off the wrong edges, betraying idealism and determination for the sake of an easier ride? Nah: the twitchy, tantalising Vossi Bop was a raw reminder of his charisma, the way he kisses words like the pope anointing a baby (“gyal say I’m bougie”) and how pretenders wither to dust in his gaze. The close of the Obama era was defined by the trifecta of Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, Pharrell’s Happy and Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk, all mining retro good vibes that were addictive yet asinine. It’s that perverse optimism that Mark Ronson captures in Late Night Feelings. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. On The Greatest, Lana Del Rey watches those squandered moments slip away on the breeze as news of missile attacks, forest fires and Kanye West darkens the horizon. The artists behind the year’s best songs were teenage pop superstars who came out of nowhere (Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X), established names looking at life and music from the cusp of their thirties (Vampire Weekend, Taylor Swift), and fan favorites making major career and personal breakthroughs (Lizzo, Ariana Grande). Or to be happy. The biggest pop stars have released their hits, and we've ended up with this list of 2019 pop songs. ore than 50 Guardian music writers were polled for their favourite albums and tracks of the year, and a bewilderingly complex spreadsheet was created to tally their votes. “I’m a thick bitch, I need tempo.” Sure enough, this is a sterner, clubbier track than her other big 2019 hits Juice and Truth Hurts (the latter not eligible for this list as it first came out in 2017). She’s “the pudding in the proof”, “drippin’ so much sauce got a bitch looking like ragu”. The dogged, synth-laden climax is a triumphant affirmation of the human spirit through personal and social collapse. LS, You imagine FKA twigs was thinking of Blue-era Joni Mitchell when she named her comeback single. “I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. LS, Pop tends to stand up straight, but Bad Guy crouched. On Seventeen, Sharon Van Etten beholds her younger self with equal measures tenderness, frustration and envy, while remaining well aware of how resistant that tempestuous girl would be to her concern; how withering she would be of what she has become. That paradox suffuses Feet: its groove has very much got its shit together, but there’s still a sickness at its heart. Ahead of our countdown of the resulting 50 best albums of the year, we’re kicking off with a list of the 20 best songs. “Am I a smoke? The Scottish singer-songwriter’s big … LS, One of the year’s warmest success stories: when Georgia released Started Out, the first single from her second album for indie Domino, at the end of 2018, it became a surprise Radio 1 hit. LS, The hot, wretched sickness of young love is rendered so acutely here by 21-year-old US indie-pop star Clairo. How do these songs compare to 2018's best pop songs? From “Old Town Road” to “Harmony Hall” and beyond, these are the tracks that defined the year. AWtD is a fine teaser for a record that is worth the wait, showing off Georgia’s newfound focus on songcraft and the depth of her references as a producer (the satisfyingly meaningless title is her tribute to the robotic proclamations of Detroit techno forefathers Cybotron).