The 20 Best Pop Radio Hits of 2022
Here's the Spotify playlist. I posted the rap list yesterday, and R&B will follow next.
1. Harry Styles - "As It Was"
#1 Pop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
After a couple of generations of Justins and other white male pop stars who mostly did watered-down R&B or vied or street cred in other ways (Ed Sheeran's rapping, etc.), it's kind of refreshing to have someone like Harry Styles on top who's just some nice solid millennial dad rock. And it's probably been decades since there was a #1 as fast as "As It Was," particularly one with live drums, even if its main keyboard riff echoed A-Ha's "Take On Me" much like one of the other biggest hits of the early 2020s, The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights." And "As It Was" was rock enough to get to #34 on alternative radio (I only heard it once on a local rock station, in between Godsmack and Sublime, it was weird).
2. Em Beihold - "Numb Little Bug"
#6 Pop Airplay, #18 Hot 100
Sad songs say so much, but these days songs about sadness are incredibly clinical, namechecking neurotransmitters and prescription antidepressants. On one hand, there are probably a lot of listeners that appreciate that kind of timely, relatable songwriting about a pretty common aspect of modern life, but on the other hand, I cringed at hearing the word 'serotonin' in multiple choruses in the past couple years. "Numb Little Bug," however, has a dry wit and a big piano pop hook that really won me over. And Em Beihold co-wrote "Numb Little Bug" with Dru DeCaro, a Baltimore native who I have a lot of fondness for from his days as the guitarist in Miguel's live band band.
3. Halsey - "So Good"
#10 Pop Airplay, #51 Hot 100
In 2021, Halsey stepped away from making pop hits for a challenging and noisy album with Trent Reznor, and If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power was absolutely incredible, my album of the year. But Top 40 radio these days is actually even more buttoned-down and risk averse than its been in other eras, so that album got very little airplay. And even Halsey's return to a more accessible sound with a single co-produced by Max Martin wound up underperforming after Halsey called out their label for not wanting to release the song unless it went viral on TikTok first, which itself became sort of a meta viral moment.
4. Lizzo - "About Damn Time"
#1 Pop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
When Lizzo broke through a few years ago, I found it kind of a bummer that there was a new pop star who was a professionally trained instrumentalist but only seemed to play the flute as sort of a comedy prop or a party trick. So I'm glad that Lizzo actually played a little flute on a #1 hit, by far my favorite song of her career so far. And ever since my wife showed me the TikTok of the kid who thinks Lizzo says "Imma need a cinnamon roll" it's impossible to hear the song without thinking about that and laughing.
5. Stephen Sanchez - "Until I Found You"
#10 Pop Airplay, #38 Hot 100
I can be pretty irritable about retro music, so when this 20-year-old kid popped up on Top 40 radio with a doo wop ballad, I regarded the whole thing with about as much suspicion as Meghan Trainor's whole schtick. But the song just kept sounding better every time I heard it and working its way into my good graces.
6. Carolina Gaitan, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, Diane Guerrero and Stephanie Beatriz - "We Don't Talk About Bruno"
#24 Pop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
Big sentimental showstoppers like "Let It Go" or "A Whole New World" are typically the songs from Disney movies that ascend the pop charts. But everybody on earth knows "Hakuna Matata" and "The Bare Necessities," so it's not like the more whimsical songs don't strike a nerve too. And when my son started watching Encanto over and over once it hit Disney+ last Christmas, "We Don't Talk About Bruno" was probably the first song both he and I committed to memory. So it wasn't a total shock to me when the song went viral and topped the Hot 100, but the whole thing was still such a delightful aberration, especially the handful of times I heard it on the radio.
7. Neiked f/ Mae Muller and Polo G - "Better Days"
#10 Pop Airplay, #23 Hot 100
I feel like a lot of pop songs attempted to capture the euphoria of going back outside after COVID-19 lockdowns, "About Damn Time" probably pulling it off the most successfully. But I have to admit I related more to the pandemic doldrums that the chorus "all I do is sit around and wait for better days" evoked. Mae Muller has a great voice, why has no major label been putting its promotional muscle behind a solo project from her in the year since this song broke through?
8. Harry Styles - "Late Night Talking"
#1 Pop Airplay, #3 Hot 100
A long-running monster hit like "As It Was" can make it difficult for whatever song the artist releases as a follow-up. And while "As It Was" kept returning to #1 too many times to ever give the second single from Harry's House a chance at the top spot, "Late Night Talking" hung in there are seemingly by sheer force of how catchy it is.
9. Adele - "Oh My God"
#11 Pop Airplay, #5 Hot 100
"Oh My God" was another song following up a megahit that didn't quite survive the journey. But people have wondered for years whether Adele would remain the old-fashioned balladeer or adapt to some of the modern sounds of the Top 40 playlists she wound up a frequent presence on. And 30 offered some nice measured experiments i that direction without going over the deep end, "Oh My God" being probably the best of those.
10. Nicky Youre & Dazy - "Sunroof"
#1 Pop Airplay, #4 Hot 100
Nicky "Youre" Ure made the classic pop star move of picking a stage name that tricks people into pronouncing his real name correctly, like Jason "Derulo" Desrouleaux. At a time when even Top 40 radio is a bit morose and tinged with darkness, songs like "Sunroof" and "About That Time" really felt like a welcome blast of cheer. I was annoyed that they had a convertible instead of a car with an actual sunroof in the video, though.
11. Steve Lacy - "Bad Habit"
#1 Pop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
I had never really been too impressed by Steve Lacy before Gemini Rights, and on my first spin through the album "Bad Habit" actually stood out to me as the worst song on the album. It grew on me once it became ubiquitous, but I had that pop radio always plays an edit where the song abruptly fades out at 2:41 when the different drums come in, though, that's my favorite part of the song. I actually heard a radio DJ express surprise that there's an extra minute to the song he'd never heard before a few days after Lacy played "SNL."
12. Taylor Swift - "Anti-Hero"
#3 Pop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
Even though Taylor Swift never left the charts, she effectively took a sabbatical from making radio hits, and "Cardigan," "Willow," and "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" all hit #1 on the strength of streaming with negligible radio play. So "Anti-Hero" is her first real radio smash in years, and it feels like all the acoustic albums and stylistic detours gave her a space for an album like Midnights to be be her most ubiquitous album since 1989 without approaching that album's blockbuster sheen. "Anti-Hero" feels a bit like one of Swift's recurring songs trying to dryly lampoon her public image like "Blank Space" or "Look What You Made Me Do," but I like it a lot more than those.
13. Lil Nas X - "Star Walkin' (League Of Legends Worlds Anthem)"
#12 Pop Airplay, #32 Hot 100
The kind of rappers who get played primarily on pop radio have historically been painfully unhip guys like Flo Rida and Macklemore who seem to have arrived in Top 40 land partly out of a disconnect with what's happening on rap radio. Lil Nas X, on the other hand, is young, smart, and tapped into the zeitgeist, which I think results in interesting moments like "Star Walkin'" where he can fuse a couple of very distant scenes together, with a drill beat on the verses and a four-on-the-floor EDM beat on the choruses.
14. Doja Cat - "Vegas"
#1 Pop Airplay, #10 Hot 100
There was a brief point during Doja Cat's rise to prominence when "Juicy" was bigger on R&B radio than pop radio, before she became a gigantic crossover star. But her reputation as an MC has gotten better and better even as she's dominated pop radio with rap singles that R&B radio doesn't touch ("Need To Know," "Get Into It," "Vegas"), so I'm curious if she'll cross back over at some point. I kind of hated most of the Planet Her singles, but Doja's contribution to the Elvis soundtrack was pretty great, sampling Shonka Dukureh's performance of "Hound Dog" in character as Big Mama Thornton in the movie. Dukureh got to perform the song with Doja Cat at Coachella, but she tragically died of heart disease in July just as the song was really taking off and becoming a chart hit.
15. Tate McRae - "She's All I Wanna Be"
#13 Pop Airplay, #44 Hot 100
When Tate McRae's "You Broke Me First" hit big a couple years, it felt like the inevitable arrival of some new pop stars who sing like Billie Eilish but make music with a much more middle-of-the-road sensibility than Billie. But McRae has grown on me this year with singles like "She's All I Wanna Be" and "Uh Oh" that put her voice in a brighter uptempo context that feels distinct from Elish-lite sadcore.
16. Dove Cameron - "Boyfriend"
#2 Pop Airplay, #16 Hot 100
Dove Cameron took the classic route from acting and occasionally singing on the Disney Channel to launching a grown-up pop star career. But when she sang in the Descendants and on "Hairspray Live!" she didn't use the Billie Eilish voice she sings "Boyfriend" in yet, because we all hadn't heard Billie Eilish yet. It's kind of hilarious to completely reshape your voice in homage to a younger singer after the world has already heard you sing for a while, but I dunno, it works for her I guess.
17. Sam Smith - "Love Me More"
#14 Pop Airplay, #52 Hot 100
"Unholy" recently became Sam Smith's first #1 song in America, completely overhauling their sound and image with something much edgier and more subversive than anything they'd done before. It's an okay song and I'm curious to see where they go with this sound on their upcoming fourth album. But I'm glad the album also features their minor hit from a few months ago, "Love Me More," and more collaborations with Stargate, they always do great work together ("Too Good At Goodbyes," "Dancing With A Stranger," "To Die For," etc.).
18. The Weeknd - "Sacrifice"
#13 Pop Airplay, #11 Hot 100
2022 was the year that pop radio finally got completely upended by old songs going viral on the internet. For some artists, it turned out great -- "Running Up That Hill" became bigger than ever 25 years later and gave Kate Bush the kind of American pop moment she'd always deserved, and an obscure indie pop band called The Walters got their first hit years after breaking up, and reunited and signed to a major label. For others, though, it was more complicated -- Chris Brown, Panic! At The Disco and AJR released new singles in 2022 that struggled to get as many streams as old songs that had blown up on TikTok. And "Die For You" from The Weeknd's 2017 album Starboy is currently a bigger hit on pop radio than any song has been from his 2022 album Dawn FM. I liked "Sacrifice" a lot, though, I think it's kind of a shame that one didn't do well.
19. Rosa Linn - "Snap"
#23 Pop Airplay, #82 Hot 100
The Eurovision Song Contest is a big deal in Europe, but in America it's kind of a funny niche thing that has intermittently launched the career of an artist that ends up popular here like ABBA or, more recently, Maneskin. Rosa Linn represented Armenia in the 2022 Eurovision competition, and finished in 20th place, but her song "Snap" became the breakout hit of the contest, hitting #1 all over Europe and becoming one of those rare Eurovision songs to enter the U.S. charts.
20. AleXa - "Wonderland"
#38 Pop Airplay
This year the Fox network aired "American Song Contest," an attempt at a U.S. version of Eurovision with all 50 states competing with original songs. It was fun to watch the mix of unknowns and establish stars compete (Sisqo represented Maryland with a song with a Baltimore club beat!), but the show inarguably did not become a must-watch event with a passionate fanbase like Eurovision, or launch a hit on the level of "Snap." The winner was AleXa, a Korean-American singer representing Oklahoma, who'd been living in South Korea making K-pop since 2018. And her song "Wonderland" did get a brief little blip of radio airplay, mainly because part of the package of winning was iHeart Radio playing their song, but AleXa got totally ripped off when one of her promised perks, a performance at the Billboard Music Awards, got downsized to her presenting an award. She was also probably a vicitim of bad timing -- it increasingly feels like 2021 was K-pop's peak in America and 2022 represented a sharp dropoff.
The 10 Worst Pop Radio Hits of 2022:
1. Yung Gravy - "Betty (Get Money)"
2. AJR - "World's Smallest Violin"
3. OneRepublic - "I Ain't Worried"
4. Joji - "Glimpse Of Us"
5. David Guetta & Bebe Rexha - "I'm Good (Blue)"
6. Meghan Trainor - "Made You Look"
7. Nicki Minaj - "Super Freaky Girl"
8. Gayle - "abcdefu"
9. Jax - "Victoria's Secret"
10. Doja Cat - "Woman"
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on Monday, December 05, 2022 at 1:59 PM.
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