Best Songs of 2021
The New York Times
Sixty-six tracks that tell the story of the year: a posthumous political statement, a hyperpop star finding his footing, an emerging force’s debut smash and a superstar’s 10-minute redo.
Many of the best songs of 2021 are on the best albums of 2021, listed here. But of course there are many more: peaks of other albums, onetime collaborations, singles, random streams. Here are 25 memorable songs, arranged partly as a ranking but mostly as a mixtape.
Recorded in 2010 but shelved until 2021, Prince’s “Welcome 2 America” was all too prescient, contemplating disinformation, consumer distractions, celebrity, desperation and historical legacies: “land of the free, home of the slave.” The bass line skulks, women harmonize, and Prince just speaks, bleak and deadpan.
“Homeland and Life” turns around a slogan of the Cuban revolution in 1959, “patria o muerte” — nation or death — to protest conditions in Cuba six decades afterward. In a passionate crescendo of sorrow and resentment, rappers and singers — both expatriates and residents — criticize poverty, lies and repression. Maykel Osorbo, one of its songwriters and performers, has been jailed.
