Music! It’s great! My deepest desire in life is for people to find good music and incorporate it into their lives. If you find a song you like here, let me know — I’d love to hear about it.
Best Songs
Best Songs of 2024
2024 was the best year for music since 2020. It was also maybe the most stressful year since 2020, so make of that what you will. It was truly a joy to listen to new music this year — hopefully you either felt that joy too, or you will once you dive into this list.
Best Songs of 2017
This year, things are a little different. My list of the Best Songs of 2017 is laid out on a beautifully designed website from taypsl.
Click here to view the Best Songs of 2017
Playlist links: Spotify | YouTube
Check back here for more year-end coverage, including the Best Albums and Best Live Performance Clips of 2017.
Best Songs of 2016
When life is terrible, music is always there as a buoy to hold you up or a companion to understand you. It can provide encouragement, escape, respite, validation, catharsis. And man, we needed it in 2016.
The year’s music, as it always does, took all shapes and sizes. We welcomed back the beloved (Radiohead, Bon Iver), became acquainted with genre-bending stars-in-the-making (Anderson .Paak, Kaytranada), and entrusted indie rock in the hands of promising young storytellers (Car Seat Headrest, Pinegrove). The very top of the rap food chain graced us with new tracks (Kanye West, Drake, Kendrick Lamar), as well as up-and-coming rappers coming to take their throne (Chance the Rapper, Joey Purp, Kamaiyah, YG, Rae Sremmurd). Knowles sisters dazzled (Beyoncé, Solange), pop stars sizzled (Rihanna, Bruno Mars, Ariana Grande), and recluses reemerged (Frank Ocean, The Avalanches). Rock is not dead, whether you want your proof in classic form (Whitney, Steve Gunn, Angel Olsen), pop form (Chairlift, Japanese Breakfast), or rip-roaring riff form (Sheer Mag, Bent Shapes). And iconic, legendary artists bid their last, brilliant farewells (David Bowie, A Tribe Called Quest). Ten, twenty, fifty years from now, these songs from 2016 will probably remind me of pain, but I think those feelings of pain will be accompanied by the good memories that filled the cracks this year.
D-Brad’s Best Songs of 2016: Spotify Playlist
D-Brad’s Best Songs of 2016: YouTube Playlist
I hope the songs on this list either made a lasting impact on you this year, or that they will in the coming year as you check them out. I love celebrating good music and sharing in that celebration, so please comment freely about songs you love (or don’t love) and let’s talk about it.
One thing of note: I’ve been doing these ‘Best Songs’ lists for 10 years now. My first installment was in 2006, when the top song went to “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley, a choice that I still stand by. So, happy 10th anniversary!
Also, for the second year in a row, my wife Taylor has provided some superb cover art. There are a lot of hidden gems relating to the year in music, so spend some time with it and check it out.
It’s always a constant struggle to keep these lists to 50, so here are 15 songs that barely missed the cut:
Ranking Led Zeppelin: A Countdown of Every Song from the Hammer of the Gods
If you attempted to craft the perfect rock band in a laboratory, you probably still wouldn’t be able to come up with something as powerful and timeless as Led Zeppelin. The sum of Zeppelin’s parts were spectacular, but each part on its own was just as impressive. There was no weak link. Take each part on its own and what do you have? John Bonham’s crushing drums, John Paul Jones’s reliable but innovative bass, Jimmy Page’s inspired, sludgy guitar riffs, and Robert Plant’s other-worldly, ethereal vocals.
Chuck Klosterman once wrote that every man “born after the year 1958 has at least one transitory period in his life when he believes Led Zeppelin is the only good band that ever existed.” I can’t speak to the general truth of that statement, but I can tell you that as a man born after 1958, I certainly had that Zeppelin phase. I was 14, I was a freshman in high school, and I bought some iron-on t-shirt transfer paper to make my own shoddy Led Zeppelin t-shirt. (This was just before the proliferation of classic rock tees at JC Penneys and Targets everywhere.) As anyone with a Zeppelin phase in their past can attest, eventually your music tastes expand. But for a moment, Led Zeppelin was all that mattered. And that always stays with you.
To celebrate Led Zeppelin’s influential and illustrious career, I have decided to rank every Led Zeppelin song. Every single one.
D-Brad Music 