Adele
“Rolling in the Deep”
“The biggest hit from the biggest album of the year is a breakup scorcher to beat all breakup scorchers,” said Rolling Stone. “Crackling with menace in the intro,” it builds slowly over a spare beat until the full-throated wail of its “gut-punch refrain”: “We could have had it all!” Sing it, Adele—the songwriting may be “old-school,” but this is “brokenhearted music” that makes a listener “want to take on the world.”
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Jay-Z and Kanye West
“Niggas in Paris”
“The brash title and profane hook don’t exactly scream radio hit,” said MTV.com. So call this song “the people’s choice.” Over a minimalist beat and tweedling synth riff, Kanye raps about partying in France while Jay-Z ruminates about what life might have been without success. It’s opulent hip-hop with mass appeal—on tour this fall, the duo have performed the song as many as nine times in a single night.
Beyoncé
“Countdown”
A pop single so “aggressively and joyously” cutting-edge that it “rearranges your sense of time and space with an effortless hair flip,” said Spin. Beyoncé’s “Olympian” vocal talents hold everything together—“the Afro-brass blasts, the minimalist synth boop boop, the jazzy Boyz II Men breakdown.” Not since Michael Jackson has a vocal performance so expertly skipped and skated all over the beat.
Sources: American Songwriter, AOL.com, A.V. Club, Billboard, Chicago Tribune, HuffingtonPost.com, MTV.com, Phoenix New Times, New York, NPR.org, Paste, Pitchfork.com, Rolling Stone, Spin, Time, The Washington Post
