It feels perhaps a little too on-the-nose to put the lead single from the top selling album of the decade at the #1 spot. But I always felt like this song pretty well justified the phenomenon that 21 became, and the way it patiently builds to Adele unleashing the full power of her voice hasn't been diminished by years of ubiquity. 

Paramore is my favorite rock album of the 2010s, but alternative radio turned its nose up at 2 of its 3 singles, leaving Top 40 radio to give "Ain't It Fun" and "Still Into You" the love they deserved. 2013 and 2014 were a rough time for me, just struggling with adulthood and parenthood and 'the real world,' and "Ain't It Fun" was the perfect song for that moment, sympathizing with what I was going through but not letting me off the hook, pushing me to grow up and deal with it. 

 

15% of this list was co-produced and/or co-written by Max Martin, who spent the 2010s tightening the grip he's had on the Hot 100 since 1999. A few of those songs, including "Teenage Dream," were also co-produced and co-written by Dr. Luke, who became a pariah in the second half of the decade. Katy Perry's still here, releasing an album just the other day, but she'll always live in the shadow of the record-breaking run Teenage Dream had -- the title track is by any metric only the 4th or 5th biggest hit from the album, but it's got a smoldering, understated charm the others lack, letting Perry sing in a more relaxed style than her usual bleat, while still containing an absurd number of hooks.

Although Harry Styles' second album was released in the last month of the 2010s and has dominated pop radio in 2020, his indifference to making his singles on his debut cleared the way for Niall Horan to unexpectedly notch the best hit of the first round of One Direction solo albums, a weird groovy little bass-driven track with some really cool, unique gated effects on the vocals. 

Jason Derulo is the biggest black pop singer of his generation who's just a pop singer, not a crossover R&B star or someone with a foot planted in hip hop or dancehall or something else. That's another way of saying he's not considered very cool, although his recent resurgence came via his videos on Tik Tok, which are so dorky that they kind of circled back around to making him more likable. His best hit, co-written by Baltimore rock journeyman Mitch Allan (SR-71's "Right Now," Bowling For Soup's "1985"), is a slick little old-fashioned pop song that jumps right into the first line so quickly that Jason Derulo only has time to whisper his name for a second at the top of the song, instead of melismatically singing it like he usually does. 

Ariana Grande has had one of the most consistently enjoyable careers of any 2010s pop star, and in a way she defined the decade, even though it was already 1/3rd over when she released her first hit. But there's something about that first hit, even as it looked backwards, sampling '70s R&B (Brenda Russell) via '90s rap (Big Punisher), that still just works perfectly for me, and crystallizes her appeal better than the sometimes clubbier hits that followed. And given Grande and Mac Miller's relationship years after "The Way," and Miller's tragic death after that, their chemistry on this song is really bittersweet to hear now. 

 

Robyn's trajectory from mainstream hitmaker to boutique pop star for cool kids took a decade, and Carly Rae Jepsen completed that process in less than half the time. I don't really care that much about her more recent work, well made as it is, it just lacks that lapel-grabbing urgency of "Call Me Maybe," which ramps up so perfectly to the chorus with an arguably even catchier chorus. I think it's possible that Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez's most lasting contribution to pop music will have been the role they played in rescuing "Call Me Maybe" from Canadian semi-obscurity. 

My R&B decade roundup included all 3 hits from 24K Magic, the album where Bruno Mars focused all his gifts for nostalgic mimicry on retro funk and soul. But up to that point, his magpie talent went all over the map, and one of his gutsiest and most specific stylistic homages was of The Police circa 1979, right down to nerdy details like the Stewart Copeland-style quarter notes on the dome the ride cymbal in the bridge. And yet the little modern touches, like the stuttering vocal samples and the EDM rush of the chorus, totally fit in and help make the song something unto itself. 

A big chunk of the songs Taylor Swift has made with Max Martin and other pop power players since 2012 are complete junk, far worse than her weakest songs as a straight-up country artist. But there were plenty of brilliant redeeming moments to balance them out, including this surprisingly funky jewel that sadly missed the top 5 in the middle of the trio of #1s from 1989 that ranged from good to awful.

"Don't Start Now" was on my 2019 year-end list, but it's become such a huge year-defining hit in 2020 that I'll stash it away as a lock for my next decade wrap-up in 10 years. But Dua Lipa's 5th big hit in the UK, which became her US breakthrough, is aging really well in its own right, a perfect example of a well choreographed video elevating a song that was great to begin with. 

14% of this list is songs where the primary artist credit, or one of them, is a producer or production team, something that wouldn't be true of a notable number of pop hits in any other decade. Although David Guetta and Calvin Harris paved the way for EDM producers to actually regularly get artist credits when they team up with pop singers for huge chart hits, and The Chainsmokers became the bratty poster boys of the scene, I'd like to suggest Zedd as the most consistent MVP of 2010s crossover EDM. I definitely felt like I'd been fooled a little when I found out that "Clarity" was written by Shady Records rap power ballad maestro Skylar Grey, but underrated British singer Foxes really brings a level of pouty drama to the vocal that I don't think the song's author would have been able to pull off. 

Lady Gaga had pop music in the palm of her hand at the beginning of the 2010s, and she ended the decade with an Oscar and probably more respect than ever. But I think she spent most of the years in between kind of losing the plot and kind of breaking the spell she had cast over the world a lot quicker than I thought was possible. I still really like Born This Way, though, particularly the way she leveraged her fame to bring her dad rock influences to the forefront and bring Clarence Clemons back to the pop charts one last time shortly before the Springsteen sideman's death.  

When the EDM wave showed up at the turn of the decade and pushed hip hop and R&B further away from the top of the charts, a lot of artists jumped on the bandwagon to survive, and made some of the worst music of their careers. But some artists were in a pretty good position to adapt: Pitbull always had a gift for being able to rap over any uptempo track from any genre, and Ne-Yo became a star singing on polished tracks by Europop hitmakers Stargate, and his voice sounds great belting out over a big booming dance beat. 

I'm not surprised that the "a rising tide lifts all boats" power of EDM's commercial ascendance benefited Daft Punk, but it's still a little remarkable to me that they were able to team up with Nile Rodgers and put a Chic-style disco jam on the charts at a time when dubstep drops were in vogue. Even Pharrell had been about as cold as he'd ever been for a few years before "Get Lucky." 

I really enjoyed Demi Lovato's pop punk-y early albums and rooted for her as her career gradually grew, and it was cool to see her finally get the platinum LP with the big Max Martin single on album #5 and level up, while still kind of having a little bit of a rock bombast to it. 

At a time everybody, including their early rivals The Wanted, was doing sleek, modern dance pop, I really respected the way One Direction stuck to their guns and did floppy bubblegum pop/rock. And "What Makes You Beautiful" is about as unapologetically old-fashioned as "That Thing You Do!" right down to the slightly iffy lyrical sentiment. One Direction was one of five British acts that notched its first U.S. top 10 in 2012, setting the tone for how America imported UK pop much more steadily in the 2010s than it did in the previous decade. 

I never really bought Bieber as a singer or even as a pop star, there's just such a rote air of role playing and obligation to his entire career. So even when he reached his peak on Purpose and was scoring one #1 after another, I kept my arms folded and continued rooting for One Direction. But shit, "Sorry" really goes off, I'm still kind of impressed that making Skrillex do cod dancehall worked out so well. 

Back when Rihanna was scoring one great uptempo hit after another but I thought "Unfaithful" was a disaster, I never would've imagined that one of my favorite Rihanna songs would one day be a piano ballad. But "Stay" has a real understated beauty to it that shows her growth as a vocalist. Rihanna is represented much more prominently on my 2010s R&B list, but out of her songs that mainly got played on pop radio, I far preferred "Stay" to the big four-on-the-floor anthems like "We Found Love." 

Since Rihanna has only released one album in the last 7 years, the cottage industry that used to supply her with enough songs for yearly albums has largely continued to churn out tracks that the writers hoped would be recorded by Rihanna but ultimately went to other artists. The term I coined for this genre is Rihjects, and the second top 10 song from The Chainsmokers' divisive run as ubiquitous hitmakers is probably my favorite Rihject. 

"Into You" is, by Ariana Grande standards, not a big record, especially when the songs that directly preceded and followed it were top 10 hits. But I feel like it's emerged as kind of a cult favorite in her fanbase, and I think it's aged better than any of her other big budget Max Martin-produced singles, and really pulled a great vocal performance out of her instead of overpowering her. 

The Jonas Brothers entered the 2010s as teen idols, and then broke up twice in the past decade to focus on solo endeavors, before coming back bigger than ever at the end of the decade. Nick Jonas's pretty good "Jealous" was the biggest hit of the fractured Jonas era, but my favorite was Joe Jonas's goofy surf rock hit with his short-lived band DNCE. 

The streaming era brought the double A-side back in style, as big name artists got into the habit or releasing 2 contrasting lead singles simultaneously and leaving it to the public to sort out which sound people wanted from them at the moment. I was disappointed if not surprised when the cornball Rihject "Shape Of You" became the people's choice from the first 2 songs Ed Sheeran released from his third album, over the surging U2-style guitar-driven grandeur of the more sentimental "Castle On The Hill." But that song, surprisingly produced by Benny Blanco (best known for co-production synth pop blockbusters like "California Gurls" and "Moves Like Jagger"), leaned on the kick drum enough to give the song something of a four-on-the-floor pulse, and the song ultimately became a pretty good-sized hit in its own right after "Shape Of You" went 10 times platinum. 

Shawn Mendes, a teenage Vine star from Canada, emerged in the last few years as the biggest guitar-slinging pop star besides Ed Sheeran. And like Sheeran, my favorite single from Mendes managed to marry a good riff to a propulsive beat that helped it fit in on Top 40 radio. I have fond memories of taking my kids to Chuck E. Cheese and hearing this song with the "just picture everybody naked" line awkwardly edited out. 

One of Swedish singer Tove Lo's later, less commercially successful albums, 2017's Blue Lips, was one of my favorite pop albums of the decade. But out of the big hits from her platinum debut Queen of the Clouds, my favorite was "Talking Body," which had an edgy yet strangely wholesome chorus ("if you love me right/ we fuck for life") that made it the rare pop song that draws a link between good sex and long term monogamy. 

I never really cared for Sam Smith's big career-defining hit "Stay With Me" -- the "I Won't Back Down" parallel bugged me too much well before Smith settled out of court with Tom Petty, and I don't think the song had much going for it besides that familiar melody. The lead single from Smith's follow-up album really captured the same lovelorn sensibility with a slightly more lively tune, though.  

Katy Perry's 9th Hot 100 chart-topper and first crossover to R&B radio knowingly mimics the Fairlight vocal samples of Art Of Noise's "Moments In Love," another track by a white act that was well received on black radio 3 decades earlier. And "Dark Horse" also provided another weird chapter in Three 6 Mafia founder Juicy J's unlikely late career renaissance that also made him an Oscar winner. 

"Since U Been Gone" was my #1 song of the 2000s, and while Kelly Clarkson had a pretty good run of hits well after that, it definitely felt like Max/Luke team moved on to continue mining that sound for less talented but perhaps more marketable singers like Katy Perry (although it doesn't really matter anymore I guess, they're both primarily TV personalities now). But Clarkson did experience a nice career resurgence with her last #1, which was also the first #1 for ascendant super-producer Greg Kurstin, who cut his teeth as a skilled multi-instrumentalist in alt-pop duos Geggy Tah and The Bird And The Bee for over a decade before rising up to the level of regularly producing singles for artists like Adele and Kendrick Lamar. 

This song by a Brit and a Swede was a top 10 in most of the English speaking world but didn't quite pierce the top 10 in the U.S. And I suspect it would've done better here if it was just a tad slower, but that insistent pulse is a big part of what I love about it. 

The silly thing about EDM going mainstream is that most of the hits credited to big name electronic producers just sound like synth pop songs where the backing track remains static throughout the song save for a drop here or there. But "Never Be Like You" is both a gorgeous pop ballad and a fidgety, ornate production showcase, with Flume throwing in all sorts of outlandish textures and flourishes in almost every bar of the song, like a a drummer who just can't stop playing flashy fills, and it works way better than it probably has a right to. 

"I Knew You Were Trouble" was only the 2nd Max Martin-produced song released by Taylor Swift, who had just begun to transition away from country with "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" (which still had an alternate mix with fiddle and steel guitar that got played on country radio). And the dubstep-style drop was pretty dramatic at the time, although now this song sounds more or less like half of her catalog, and is easily one of the best tracks from that half. The goat meme will always be funny, though. 

Florence And The Machine have really grown on me in the last few years from my wife playing them around the house a lot, and that was one of the last great concerts we saw before The End Of Concerts, Florence Welch is an incredibly powerful vocalist. But the first time I was really impressed with her voice was on "Sweet Nothing," and I'm glad she got out of the comfort zone of her usual sound just once to show off how she could kill a dance track like this. 

Another good example of a great singer from outside the Top 40 realm just destroying an EDM pop song seemingly just to prove that they could. Famously, 13 different singers took a pass at singing "The Middle," several of whom are more famous than Morris, but I feel like once she hit that big "baby" ad lib toward the end, she locked it down. 

Britney Spears kicked off the 2010s with a big comeback, scoring 3 big hits off Femme Fatale. But I have to be honest, by far my favorite Britney track of the last decade is this wonderfully ridiculous lead single from her next album, Britney Jean, which probably could've been huge in another year but maybe people just weren't ready. 

After Greg Kurstin's alt-rock journeyman career turned him into a major hitmaker, helped a Canadian indie duo who'd been around for almost as long pull off a surprisingly good synth pop overhaul of their sound. This song was pretty big by Tegan And Sara's standards, but I think it should have been huge. That moment where the first half chorus hits hard and then the second half somehow takes it up a notch, just fantastic. 

James Bay never quite got to the sensitive-guy-with-a-guitar pop star level of Ed Sheeran and Shawn Mendes, but I think he makes much better and more interesting music than he gets credit for. His sophomore slump album Electric Light was a brilliant overlooked gem, and the big single from his first album, "Let It Go," still sounds pretty great to me. 

One of the biggest and worst developments of 2010s pop was how the surge of big pop divas making updated Eurodance tracks really pushed R&B, especially R&B by women, out of Top 40, to the point that even Beyonce can't get played without dueting with Ed Sheeran. And when Normani, by some distance the most talented member of Fifth Harmony, went solo after the group's split, it became clearer just how bad the Top 40 climate is even for black women singing pop music. It's been about a year since the last time a Normani single got a big push, so I'm worried that her label has already given up, but they had a pretty good run of putting her on songs with Khalid and Sam Smith that provided a context for her to thrive on pop radio, even if she really shouldn't need Sam Smith's help to do that. 

Maroon 5 are kind of the Chicago of their generation: they were never exactly cool in the "Sunday Morning" era (or "25 Or 6 To 4" era), but the smoother and more anonymous sound they adapted in their second decade of ubiquity post-"Moves Like Jagger" (or circa David Foster-penned ballads like "You're The Inspiration") made people feel a lot more nostalgic for their early stuff. But by the beginning of the 2010s, Maroon 5 were missing the top 10 blatantly rewriting "This Love" as "Misery" and it was clearly time for a change, and for better or worse, turning to outside writers and producers made them bigger than ever. Out of their later hits, it's oddly "Sugar," an outtake offered to them from C-list funky white dude Mike Posner, became the one that best evokes the breezy retro charm of Songs About Jane Maroon 5. 

For a few years there, it felt like Pitbull and Flo Rida had successfully taken over the 'pop rap' mantle that had been looked down upon since the days of MC Hammer and reimagined it in the mold of an opportunistic mutation of southern strip club rap. It wouldn't last for a variety of reasons, perhaps primarily because the streaming era completed the process of making rap music into pop music, but for a few years there Flo Rida had a nice run of shameless crossover hits. And "Wild Ones" unexpectedly became the launching pad for Sia, a cult Australian singer who by then was nearly 40, becoming one of the biggest songwriters in the music industry and a chart-topping artist in her own right. 

The white Seattle backpacker rap duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis became a pop phenomenon with 2012's The Heist and a pair of chart-topping singles, the less said about the better. But the song that I actually had a weakness for was the over-the-top underperforming lead single from their follow-up album. "Downtown" is clearly modeled after The Heist's hits, with the "Thrift Shop"-style celebration of affordability over luxury -- in this case mopeds over sports cars -- and the big melodic hook by a relatively unknown singer -- in this case Eric Nally of the low level major label rock band Foxy Shazam. But Nally delivered the giant campy chorus to the cheap seats, and the call-and-response raps by the trio of '80s hip hop trailblazers that Macklemore assembled to bolster his real hip hop cred is really catchy. I'm glad Macklemore's superstar era was short-lived, but I wish it had pushed this absurd and entertaining song to greater heights. 

There's a case to be made for Swae Lee as one of the best hook writers of the 2010s -- "No Flex Zone," "Formation," "Black Beatles," "Unforgettable," the guy just has an incredible ear. And "Sunflower" is very clearly Swae Lee's baby, but since it was for a soundtrack and he wasn't the biggest name on the song, Post Malone got top billing, which is fine since his half of the song is the most tolerable Posty has ever been. 

I spent a lot of the last decade working at corporate events and conferences and conventions where a generic mix of pop hits was always piped into the room, and only a few of the biggest uptempo songs stayed in rotation for more than a year. And out of those songs, I actually got less sick of "Shake It Off" than, say, "Uptown Funk." That clunky beat that was transparently patterned after Pharrell's "Happy" and the spoken bridge has aged terribly, but some how the whole cringe-inducing song has aged pretty well for me. 

"Shots," like V.I.C.'s "Wobble," was a normie sleeper hit around the turn of the decade, somehow becoming quietly ubiquitous and going double platinum with negligible radio play simply because people loved hearing it at parties. It's stupid like all LMAO songs are, but it's stupid in a way that I enjoy more than the later chart-topping singles that it helped set the stage for, and it clearly also made Lil Jon's "Turn Down For What"-era EDM career revival possible too. 

It's possibly the strangest collection of talent that's ever made a monster hit together, rivaled only by "Old Town Road": Swedish EDM producer Avicii, Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger, and Stones Throw rapper Aloe Blacc, who'd recently made the transition to singing retro soul, somehow got together and made a country song with a dance beat. And the world went absolutely apeshit for it. 

And of course, long before "Old Town Road," Pitbull and Kesha topped the charts with their own weird campy country rap song. This is another track that was pitched to Rihanna, but I think Kesha was absolutely a better fit for this absurd song. 

I could tell that Bruno Mars was inarguably talented based on his first album, but I didn't actually like anything on it. "It Will Rain," the power ballad he did for one of the Twilight soundtracks in between albums, was the first thing I heard that made me think I really might like this guy after all. And it kinda makes me wish he did more pure pop stuff like this amidst all the genre exercises.