#Top quiet storm songs of 2010s series

Listen closely, and вЂњChanelвЂќ also reveals itself to be a meditation on masculinity, one that alternately embraces it, subverts it, and points out its absurdity. ItвЂ™s all about Frank and the places his words can take you: a heated swimming pool in the hills, a Tokyo back alley, the first-class lounge at the Delta terminal. The piano chords are simple and translucent the beat ambles casually. There isnвЂ™t much to it in terms of melody or structure. вЂњChanelвЂќ is the first and best of them, capturing an artist in total command of his faculties as a singer, writer, and rapper.

#Top quiet storm songs of 2010s series

Listen: J Balvin / Willy William, вЂњMi Gente (Remix)вЂќ ДЄfter releasing Blonde in 2016, Frank Ocean spent the next year trickling out a series of singles that built upon that albumвЂ™s fluid confidence. It remains a testament to pop musicвЂ™s ability to push back against growing neo-nationalist fervor-there was no border, no wall, that could keep people from coming together and loving this song. Aided on the remix by BeyoncГ©, who audaciously tackles Spanish and ups the diva ante, вЂњMi GenteвЂќ became the first all-Spanish song to reach the top of SpotifyвЂ™s Global Top 50 chart. His lines like вЂњel mundo nos quiereвЂќ (вЂњthe world wants usвЂќ) transform the song into a universal call to the dancefloor, an embrace of solidarity and unification at a time of enormous worldwide polarization. No wonder вЂњMi GenteвЂќ was such a global, cross-culture sensation.Д«alvin worked with William to reinvent the source material, adding Spanish lyrics, chants, and ferocious Latin percussion. Much of what makes Colombian singer J BalvinвЂ™s вЂњMi GenteвЂќ sizzle-that audacious drumbeat, that insistent five-note vocal melody-is lifted from Mauritian-French singer Willy WilliamвЂ™s 2017 track вЂњVoodoo Song,вЂќ which itself reinterprets a sample from the Indian composer Akassh. J Balvin / Willy William: вЂњMi Gente (Remix)вЂќ (2017) But his actual relationship to such sources could be hard to read: Was Maus poking fun at musicвЂ™s power to manufacture an emotional response, like when we find ourselves crying in the middle of a commercial, or celebrating its potential to offer us a fleeting moment of ecstasy, a glimpse of a world that is better than our own? Arriving at the end of 2011вЂ™s We Must Be the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves with the cathartic finality of perfectly curated exit music, this song-with its glittering harpsichord arpeggios, briskly pulsing bass, and grandiose allusions to borderless love-is the closest Maus has ever come to being a true believer.

Like many of his lo-fi pop contemporaries in the early вЂ™10s, reclusive Midwesterner John Maus pushed underground music forward by looking backward-rejecting digital studio techniques in favor of old drum machines and wonky synths, excavating the dramatic excesses of вЂ™80s stadium pop and sentimental radio jingles as though they held clues to some hard-to-pinpoint generational subconscious.