2013 Faves: the top 10

Well, this is it. For the three people who have checked this list out, I hope you've enjoyed it. Hopefully you've found something that you liked that you hadn't heard before. Now go buy some music with all of those iTunes gift cards!

#10: "Tessellate", Alt-J *



An Awesome Wave was truly one of the better albums released in 2012, although I only started listening to it last December. The gateway to Alt-J for me was, oddly enough, a Mumford & Sons cover of "Tessellate" as performed on BBC 1's Live Lounge (as was The XX's cover of "Finally" on the honourable mention list). I loved that song and it made my year-end list last year. Then I started listening to the Alt-J version and found it much more intriguing. It never really did better than cracking my personal top 10 in any month this year, but was in heavy rotation throughout and I'm still enamoured with the song now that it's starting to get airplay on alternative stations.

#9: "Get Free", Major Lazer feat. Amber Coffman



Another 2012 smash that I caught onto a bit late. Apparently this one broke the Internet last year. I and heard some less-than-impressive remixes but not the original. Boosted by my exposure this year to the Dirty Projectors, I played this song an awful lot. I'm not sure what my verdict is on Diplo…he seems to come up in cultural appropriation discussions an awful lot, but he certainly produces some fantastic music. I always have my ears peeled for new Diplo stuff and he will likely figure on the 2014 list somehow.

#8: "Latch", Disclosure feat. Sam Smith



IMHO, the best track on one of the best albums of the year, "Latch" was a no-brainer for the top 10. Disclosure has chosen this song to be the lead single from Settle in the US and it's apparently going to be released this month. It probably won't do as well as it did on the UK charts, where it hit #11 but we may still be hearing an awful lot of it by this spring. Also, Sam Smith made the long list for the BBC Sound of poll this year, the winner of which is yet to be announced..

#7: "Same Love", Macklemore x Ryan Lewis feat. Mary Lambert *



There's probably not enough I can say about this song. After "Starting Over" and "Thrift Shop" got me hooked on Macklemore and Ryan Lewis enough to pick up The Heist, I finally got my first listen of "Same Love". A slack-jawed double-take ensued. Was I actually hearing this? Did this song actually get recorded? I shared links to it as quickly as I could and was pleased to see it getting enough run that it debuted on the Hot 100 back in late 2012. Then they performed it on "Ellen". I figured it would be the second single, but then MxRL went with "Can't Hold Us". I suppose it would have been hard, from a legitimacy standpoint, to follow up "Thrift Shop" with "Same Love". And I can't think of a better way to pave the way for a single like this than to nab a second #1 song first. A lot of things fell into place so nicely to help get this song the exposure it deserved and I was over the moon to see how it was received. I smell a Grammy.

#6: "My Blood", Ellie Goulding *



This is the first song I present to you in the top 10 that wasn't really a single in any sense and didn't garner 1M listens on Soundcloud. But I thought this song was a tour de force. The track is from Ellie Goulding's second album, Halcyon, which yielded the hits "Anything Could Happen", "Burn" (on Halcyon Days, the extended reissue) and "I Need Your Love" (bonus track). I love how the flavour of the chanting in the bridge, which seemed kind of novel a year ago, has also turned up in a prominent role in Zedd's "Clarity" and Bastille's "Pompeii". The wave of the future? Bring back Gregorian chants!!

#5: "Always Alright", Alabama Shakes



I suppose I'm a little backward on Alabama Shakes. Last year, everyone hailed "Hold On" as one of the songs of the year, but I was lukewarm on it. Then "Always Alright" shows up on the Silver Linings Playbook soundtrack, doesn't even get released as a single but strongly resonates with me and becomes my fifth-favourite song of the year. Even more bizarre is that this song would be right at home on the local classic rock station, which I abhor.

#4: "Don't Save Me", HAIM



Although their music started to surface online in 2012, 2013 was HAIM's coming-out party. Once their album Days Are Gone was released, it seemed they were everywhere. And this was AFTER they were the darlings of SxSW and were announced the winners of the BBC Sound of poll for 2013. Singers, songwriters, multi-instrumentalists and producers, these women have definitely got it all. Believe it or not, this was not my favourite HAIM track of the year (keep reading) but it was pretty close. My four-year-old was also obsessed with this one.

#3: "Hurricane", MS MR



After this American duo released "Hurricane" off their Candy Bar Creep Show EP in Europe in 2012, the single limped onto the Belgian and German charts. Finally, a couple of months back, "Hurricane" got pushed in the US to accompany the release of MS MR's first LP, Secondhand Rapture and it has cracked the top 10 of the alternative charts. I somehow figured that Lorde's breakthrough on that chart would have paved the way for this track to do better, but it seems that its run is just about done. This is my second-favourite song of the year that has a real moment when the drums come in.

#2: "Forever", HAIM



While I've been all over HAIM this year, I still haven't quite figured out what their niche is at radio. What station is most likely to play the heck out of any of their music? Not rock or alternative (although "Top Rock Songs" is the only Billboard chart on which "The Wire" has appeared). I doubt CHR will latch on. AAA I guess? Adult contemporary is a stretch. In any case, despite all the accolades for HAIM this year, aside from actually getting the album or cruising the web, I'm not sure how people are actually going to hear their music in the end. We shall see.

#1: "& It Was U", How to Dress Well



There it is, numero uno. A fluffy little earworm of a confection from someone almost nobody knows about tops my list for 2013. It's entirely possible that "male falsetto" could be added to my list of things that I like in a song. Strange, but there it is. Pitchfork named his album Total Loss one of the 50 best of 2012. I always wonder how critically acclaimed artists like this make the HAIM-like leap to stardom. I'm not entirely sure it's going to happen for How to Dress Well, but I do love this song.