The 50 Greatest Songs of 2018, Compiled by Martin Canine

Length: 4:47
Album: Take 2

The year’s most majestic music moment comes from a French woman who got most of her international recognition as an actress. After starring in the artful Lars von Trier masterpieces “Antichrist”, “Melancholia” and “Nymphomaniac”, Charlotte Gainsbourg made herself a name in European film circles as an ideal cast for complex, philosophical roles, but just like her famous father Serge - one of the biggest music geniuses himself - she is also a respectable songwriter. While most of the attention and praise of her 5 track EP “Take 2” was dedicated to an almost unrecognizable cover of Kanye West’s “Runaway”, it’s “Lost Lenore” that marks 2018’s most enchanting 5 minutes of song. From the sinister strings to the triumphant brass, the mysterious harpsichords and of course, Gainsbourg’s dreamy delicate vocals, the tune is just one gigantic trip into a mix of glory, darkness, intimate tenderness, and ultimately sheer epicness. The instrumental is heavy and cinematic, the vocals are soft and delicate - which gives the song a sound so enchanting, so fantastique, that you can’t escape the twisted, elegant fairy tale Gainsbourg puts you in.

Length: 3:46
Album: (upcoming 2019 album)

The radical switch from upbeat, cheerful choirs to the extreme darkness of the tribal beats heard makes the morbid nature of the topic audible. Several parts of the song may be the perfect fuel for a dance party to get your body moving - that is until the sinister tone violently rips your of it. And this is exactly the point: Childish Gambino baits you into territory you feel comfortable in just to confront you with the issue of racially motivated brutality and systematic discrimination, a problem often heard and that has rarely ever done anything against it. The chorus represents what we want to hear, the verses what we need to. Sure, you can take a look at how beautiful paintings on the walls are while the elephant in the room tramples everyone in the room to death, and then heads straight for you and your family.

Length: 3:37
Album: A Star Is Born

If “Shallow”, one of the year’s biggest pop songs and part of the soundtrack of “A Star is Born”, doesn’t get the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2019, the Academy is out of their minds. A few years ago, Lady Gaga first departed from the job as Madonna’s heiress of the pop empire and instead became the female American Elton John of today - a role which suits her equally fine. “Shallow”, a song about overcoming times when you feel horrible and everything seems lost, is the year’s most inspirational music moment, and - like “Rolling in the Deep” and “Take Me To Church” before it - a reminder that in order to have a song blockbuster in the 2010s, you don’t necessarily need to be danceable. For the most part, “Shallow” consists of an acoustic guitar, piano and the voices of Gaga and Cooper, who star as a singer-songwriter and a country star in the film - before it all climaxes in an explosion of emotions.

Length: 4:02
Album: Liberation

She is back. She really is. The arguably best female pop singer alive comes back with music that compliments her vocal talent, unlike her previous dance pop lacklusters of the 2010s. “Twice” stands out as a minimalistic yet still epic piano ballad that sounds epic solely through her huge singing voice that flawlessly masters to present the expressive melody and lyrics. And for a moment, just a very brief moment in the beginning, you can hear a bit of “is this the real life? ” spirit hidden between the lines. It’s almost operatic, despite it having an outstandingly little orchestration: only a piano.

Length: 3:16
Album: Here Come The Aliens

Kim Wilde brings the new wave of the 1980s back into our modern times as if not a single day passed. The powerful synth punk chorus and vivid guitar solo of “Kandy Krush” warp us back to her heydays, right along her great hits such as “Kids in America”, “Chequered Love” or “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”. The same youthful energy, the same sense for earworms. Its greatest achievement is NOT sounding like an intentional nostalgic throwback, but so natural as if she found lost tapes that would have the follow up to her “Select” album.

Length: 4:04
Album: Dirty Computer

There’s a bit of progressive rock hidden in Janelle Monáe’s impressive vision of RnB and funk. Just a bit. But the amount of it is enough to make “So Afraid” feel rich and spheric, and at the same time fragile like glass. Guitars and keyboards intertwine with Monáe’s soulful vocals as she sings about her fear to give in to love with everything that could possibly go wrong, and makes the song feel alive with her often depressing descriptions of her surroundings, feeding her angst. She sings how she’s “fine in her shell”, but… is she? This is one of the song where the melody tells just as much as the lyrics.

Length: 10:08
Album: Mythos

For years, Bushido’s astounding career that ultimately lead to him becoming the most successful German rapper of all time was dominated by ties to the criminal Abou Chaker Clan, especially Arafat Abou Chaker who always portrayed himself as his best friend. In early 2018, Bushido and the clan parted ways, and the rapper presented his side of the story. In his 10 minute epic, he tells the story of a young aspiring artist in need and Mephisto, the devil figure of the Dr. Faustus tale. He helped him become insanely successful, but claimed his share of wealth and fame, and forced his control and influence upon him. When the artist meets a girl and becomes more interested in raising a family, Mephisto showed his true face by spreading lies and misery. It is the story of greed, of rise to stardom, of a false debt and of a complicated love relationship. Many called it a diss track, but it's a personal, autobiographical epic poem.

Length: 6:08
Album: Dead Magic

Out of the Swedish singer-songwriter’s newest album, “The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra” is the most approachable song (which isn’t too hard to be honest: there are only 4 others, but two of them last 12 and 16 minutes, respectively). A sinister, eerie epic, the tune lives from a mix of the gloomy, low pitched folk instrumental and von Hausswolff’s extremely expressive, haunting, tormented vocal delivery. “Who is she? Who is she, who is she, who is she? To say goodbye? ”, she desperately yells at us, and we feel empathy.

Length: 9:37
Album: Norman F--king Rockwell (upcoming 2019 album)

Lana Del Rey never was a pop star. She always was an indie rock songwriter, a late flower power queen, a brilliant psychedelic artist, that just happened to somehow enter the territory of mainstream success. And with her 2018 single “Venice B---h”, an early preview of her forthcoming album, she fully departed from any form of crowd pleasers - not that she ever purposely made those. Clocking in at over 9 and a half minutes, the epic ballad is reminiscent of the greatest of works by the greatest of 60s music artists. If it was released next to songs by The Beatles or The Doors, we would now widely consider this to be one of the all time classic songs ever made. Atmospheric, trippy, and of a welcome old fashioned sense of experimentalism, the sheer hypnotic nature of the highly aesthetic piece makes you sink into the dreamy world of music Del Rey invites you to, making you completely forget your sense of time.

Length: 2:44
Album: Skins

While the posthumous “Skins” was a blatant cash grab featuring a bunch of sketches in the earliest of stages that barely even counted as a full album, “train food” was the one yet unreleased pearl hidden in the legacy of XXXTentacion. Retrospectively eerily prophetic, the minimalist storytelling song that’s supported mainly by few dark piano tones and background noise, but no drums, deals with the protagonist’s encounter with death personified and his attempts to escape him.

Length: 5:05
Album: Masters of the Sun, Vol. 1

After 8 years, the Black Eyed Peas are back - without Fergie, but an anonymous new singer, with lyrics as good as in their beginnings and production as awesome as on “Elephunk” and ”Monkey Business”. “Yes or No”, based around a tense score-like loop of a piano and occasionally a flute reminds you that your role in life is ultimately your decision, whether you choose to be left or right, whether you decide to take a stand or pick something in the middle, whether you heal or kill, whether you take something or make it yourself - and of course, whether and when you say Yes or No.

Length: 3:51
Album: Y.A.L.A.

After Cro who dropped “tru.” in 2017, the rapper and producer duo Genetikk were the second big names in German hip hop that actually dared to explore the more experimental soundscapes that Kanye West already established in the US at the beginning of the decade. Based around a sample of the legendary singer and actress Marlene Dietrich, “Marlene” merges crude and graphix sex and nightmarish imagery to a somehow still extremely poetic and almost sentimental number about a toxic love. With all its talk of bitten off heads with intact lower body parts… it’s still an ultimately melancholic and emotional tune.