A Decade on Shuffle, Part 3
The trip down the 2010s continues, with five more songs and a quasi-perfect balance across genres.
For those who just joined this newsletter (I see you, you and you), I’m currently revisiting my hundred favorite songs from the last decade. In the past six months, I have covered fifteen of them, so buckle up: at this pace, I should be done by 2025.
Here we go again.
11.
Tinashe - Wanderer (2015)
Browsing through Soundcloud for new music in early 2015, it was easy to mistake Tinashe for one the many newcomers populating the platform. In fact, when she released Amethyst, her third mixtape, in March of that year, the all-around singer-songwriter had already lived multiple creative lives. A former child entertainer, Tinashe had been a bandmate in a short-lived girl group, a motion-capture model in Robert Zemeckis’ uncanny Polar Express, a sitcom regular on CBS, and that’s for a very quick read of her deep resume. Despite all her prior experiences, Amethyst sounded like a new birth. In seven tracks, the 22-year old channeled the slow-motion moodiness which dominated R&B at the time, but the EP also had a built-in optimism. In “Wanderer”, Tinashe manifested ambition over complacency, and she made it sound like she was taking you on a tour of a newly-discovered solar system. That bass line, all round and mellow, gave the song a timeless vibe, a throwback to more innocent times that still promised a welcoming future. On the cover of Amethyst, Tinashe is seen holding the titular stone, a blossoming micro-universe in her hands, and that’s exactly how “Wanderer” felt like.
84.
Mahmood - Soldi (2019)
By the admission of Claudio Bonoldi, the music publisher of Mahmood, the Milanese singer was not supposed to win the Sanremo Festival in 2019. In the expected narrative of the weeklong event, which captures the imagination of Italians every February since 1951, his entry “Soldi” was meant to be the token oddity, not the number one. “And yet”, Bonoldi later remembered, “[Mahmood’s] victory made everything that came before him seem completely outdated.” Born Alessandro Mahmoud from an Italian mother and an Egyptian father, the 26-year-old singer eschewed the tradition of schmalzy ballads—Sanremo’s signature offering—for a head-turning mashup of styles that evoked sing-song rap as much as Arabic pop. Assembled by maximalist producers Dardust and Charlie Charles, Mahmood’s bitter memories of an estranged dad who “drank champagne during Ramadan” sounded defiant and festive, a manifesto concealed in a secret diary. “Soldi” had the rare quality of songs that feel like a permanent hook, every of their articulations so infectious they could become the peak of a dozen more singles. Mahmood’s instinct for melody also got “Soldi” a number 2 spot at the Eurovision contest and the performative irk of Italy’s far right, angered at the sight of a mixed-race talent taking Italy’s pop into the future. Three years later, Mahmood won Sanremo again, this time with a duet and, noticeably so, much less drama. Italy’s political landscape hasn’t really brightened since, but hope remains.
27.
Nolwenn Leroy - Je ne serai jamais ta Parisienne (2010)
At the turn of the decade, Nolwenn Leroy found herself at a crossroad. The classically-trained singer had been a winner of Star Academy, the popular TV show from where she emerged as a commanding vocalist. She had achieved commercial successes repeatedly, but her most recent album, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, indicated a desire for more whimsical gestures. Her next would be Bretonne, an album-long homage to her native Britanny, with covers of traditional hymns and modern favorites. With little fanfare, the record became a regionalist blockbuster, with one million copies sold. Bretonne’s unbridled joy made it a perfect little comfort album, with Nolwenn embracing her role as Brittany ambassador with gravitas and generosity. The standout track, however, was an outlier: “Je ne serai jamais ta Parisienne”, an original song written by brooding auteur Miossec. The song told the dead-end romance between a homesick Breton girl and her Parisian lover. “Je ne serai…” starts off in serenity, with soothing images of the Ouessant and Molène islands. Then gradually, reality sinks in—this is not a postcard, it’s a break-up song, and we are witnessing the uncomfortable, it’s-not-you-it’s-me conversation of two imminent ex-lovers. At the 2:45 mark, Nolwenn’s voice rises in intensity for one final hook, driving home the crushing impossibility of the whole affair. The grand landscapes would return, but for that brief moment, Nolwenn’s Brittany had become the saddest night in Paris, with its random bar, two empty glasses, and nothing left to say.
40.
William Sheller - Bus Stop (2015)
William Sheller has long been a fugitive presence in French chanson. He started out as a bubblegum pop heartthrob in the 1970s with a novelty song that he disavowed almost instantly. From there, he evaded expectations, composing intricate, prog-influence pieces of epic ambitions and opaque meaning. Still, if one portrait of him should remain, it would probably be the cover of Sheller en Solitaire, a live recording from 1992 that ended up being his biggest success. There he was, dressed in black, on a stage shrouded in complete darkness, singing and playing a grand piano under two dim spotlights. That album featured “Un homme heureux”, the hit single that remains the prime definition of the Sheller style—searching, delicate, a bit austere. In later eras of his long career, Sheller returned more frequently to the minimal companionship of the piano (the aptly-titled Épures, released in 2004, is my personal favorite). “Bus Stop”, off Stylus, the latest album he released in 2015, continued that tradition by underscoring Sheller’s love for chamber music and short stories of intimate drama. The singer-composer narrates a heartfelt goodbye between two undisclosed characters, who could be friends, siblings or lovers. Sheller echoes an older of his song about painful separations, 1979’s “Nicolas”, the vivid story of a child who meets his adoptive parents in a cold rural farm. Linked by the solemnity of the piano, the two songs function as an arc through times, where distant characters, somehow, find themselves tied by the shared experience of abandon.
81.
Rae Sremmurd ft. Gucci Mane - Black Beatles (2016)
2016 was the year I let go of the urge to make sense of hip-hop. I was fine chilling on the sideline, and engaging with the music with a more casual outlook (mapping the distribution of influences in Atlanta rap would have been a full-time job I couldn’t handle anyway). Freed from the pressure to keep up, I could witness the arrival of massive hits with a newfound innocence, a return to the long-forgotten feeling of hearing, say, “I Got 5 on It” or “What’s My Name” for the first time on the radio. This feeling was particularly pleasant with “Black Beatles”, the number-one hit from Atlanta duo Rae Sremmurd, produced by a then-ubiquitous Mike Will Made It. The song was released on September 13, 2016, a few weeks before the dawn of the Trump era. The timing makes it one of the last cultural artefacts of the Obama years, and one of the pioneering meme-songs of the decade (yes, Hillary Clinton doing the Mannequin Challenge might have costed her the election). The song also remains one of the most arresting rap singles of its time, from the pristine opening keys to the outré ad libs from rapper Swae Lee, circling around the hook like a mischievous soprano. All silly fun and juvenile swagger, “Black Beatles” had it both ways like any monster hit does: trivial like a guilty pleasure, yet inevitable like a true classic.
In the previous entry, I wrote about Rick Ross, Drake, SCH, Bernard Lavilliers and Young M.A. Check out the full playlist on Tidal and Spotify.