REMEMBER the 2010s as a time of musical experimentation and lyrical brilliance? You shouldn’t. These ear-defiling tracks will forever define the decade:
Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO
‘We knew it was shit at the time’, survivors of the decade claim. ‘We didn’t realise that buying mp3s discreetly in the privacy of our own homes would send a nephew-and-uncle duo to number one’. There are no excuses. Especially as Sexy and I Know It was equally huge.
Gangnam Style by Psy
Before Squid Game and BTS, our exposure to South Korean culture came in the form of an overweight man in sunglasses pretending to ride a horse, with a chorus that’s the brain-eating earworm that eats all the other brain-eating earworms. The only mercy is nobody could sing along to it because they didn’t know the words.
Grenade by Bruno Mars
Pre-Uptown Funk, Bruno gave us this dark and twisted tale of a relationship where the girl didn’t give a f**k and the boy kept saying he would blow himself up to save her. A claim that can be safely made in the knowledge that it’s not going to happen makes for a creepy incel anthem.
Despacito by Luis Fonsi
Later in the 2010s we branched out into Latin culture, just like when listening to Julio Iglesias in the 80s and Las Ketchup in 2002. For a whole platinum-selling summer we rocked to Despacito. To this day, no-one in Britain has bothered to find out what despacito even means.
Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke featuring TI and Pharrell Williams
Now remembered as a black chapter in musical history during which a model was groped, a sleazy bloke bollocksed up his marriage and Pharrell f**ked up songwriting law indefinitely. But at the time, high on the previous year’s Olympics and the coalition government, we f**king loved it.
All About That Bass by Meghan Trainor
The novelty body positivity anthem that managed to make everybody feel bad. What’s so bad about treble, Meghan? Don’t we want both, so that our audio can be appropriately balanced? What are you with that bloody bass, a boy racer driving slowly around a sink estate?
