At first I thought this song felt like a retread of Moneybagg's big hit from last year "Said Sum," but now I think it's far better, really sounds fantastic on the radio, one of those rare 2-minute rap songs where it feels like not a second is wasted. Here's the 2021 singles Spotify playlist that I add 10 singles to every month. 

The Maine are a pop punk band from Arizona -- what a wacky name! -- that apparently has been putting albums in the top halif of the Billboard 200 for 13 years but I'd never heard of them before my local alt-rock station started playing "Sticky." It's one of those songs that sticks in your head that's about songs sticking in your head. 

It's kind of become a meme lately that Travis Barker is turning all sorts of people like Machine Gun Kelly and Willow Smith into pop punk artists. But I really think it's awesome that one of the most talented drummers of his generation has become this torchbearer for a style of music that had been on a downward commercial slide since his band's peak years. And "Transparent Soul" is one of the best songs he's been involved in lately. 

Lots of musicians have a dark or absurd sense of humor that never comes through in their earnest and emotional lyrics, but rarely has the contrast been more stark than with John Mayer. But in a weird way it feels like he's finally found a way to reconcile those two things with his upcoming album Sob Rock -- the cover art and videos for the singles, including "New Light" from way back in 2018, all have some manner of campy '80s aesthetic, but he's still doing super sincere John Mayer songs within that glossy retro sound. "Last Train Home" in particular sounds kind of like a Toto song, while the video looks like a late '80s Eric Clapton thing and Maren Morris pops up vamping over the chorus like Ronnie Spector in "Take Me Home Tonight." 

Cannons is very much working in an '80s synth pop mode, this song even has a synth patch that sounds like "Running Up That Hill," it's a good follow-up to their recent radio breakthrough "Fire For You." 

The less said about R. Kelly these days the better, but "Same Girl" was always an entertaining song, and "Set Him Up" does a clever job of gender flipping the premise with a similar back-and-forth lyrical dialogue. 

This British synth pop track that directly references heat in June was a big summer jam on American alternative radio last year, and a year later it's now crossed over to pop radio. Last year I was too ambivalent about it to put it on the 'best' or 'worst' category of my alt-rock radio roundup, but after some prolonged exposure I have come to the conclusion that it's an insipid piece of crap. I hate the way the guy sings but I also really hate his bizarre choices of words ("that look that's perfectly unsad" and the mix of past and present tense in "last night all I think about is you").