Ranking and Reviewing the 2010s hits!

I disliked that song too! What do you think of Sia's Cheap Thrills?

My reviews won't be as passionate as that first one since 10 years worth of hits is a lot to cover!

The Weeknd - The Hills (2015)



The story of a pretty terrible human being keeping it low profile in its quest of adultery and drugs, with the fear of being discovered. Facing the reality that he's not his own self anymore without abusing on the coke. This tale of terrible human facets is transformed into a horror of a dark song, that's the premise of "The Hills".
The Weeknd has always been a popular figure of the Alt-R&B scene in the indiesphere since the early-10s, particularly standing for themes of lonely sensuality and hedonistic escapism. And this song follows his line of dark R&B quite to the perfection. I absolutely love the use of the hi-hits borrowed from Trap here (some of the best ever) in how they add to dirty grittiness of the song, as well as the screams leading to the chorus. The ethereal bridge is a nice break from the heaviness. And while "the hills have eyes" is kind of a clever pun relative to the story, but it's still probably a bit too on-the-nose of a reference (especially since it basically the title to this song).

The thing holding me back from giving a higher note to this song is how draining of a journey putting it on every time.
8/10

Mike Posner - I Took a Pill in Ibiza (SeeB Remix) (2016)



The remix is far and wide better than the terribly whiny and preachy Folk Pop original. The themes of self-realisation and coming up with your own failures works better when the EDM highlights the confusion and the depravity, having less of self-importance side and more of an unappealing afterparty regret one. A fairly engaging story told by a former one-hit wonder in how surprising and brutally honest he can be about himself. The production is fairly nice, somehow managing to give Tropical House's typical warmth and poppiness an empty room melancholia feeling. The echoing of the voice is also a great touch, perfectly highlighting the singer's emotional state.
All in all a strong song, especially for this worthless of a year. It's still a little too overly pathetic for my tastes.
7.5/10

Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe (2012)



This might be the ultimate guilty pleasure song to end all guilty pleasure songs. I probably won't regret saying that overall Carly Rae Jepsen is the best Pop stars of the 2010s. She especially killed it back in 2015 with her "EMO-T-ION"-era. So it's kind of sad to me that for most people she's been only known for being the author of this almost-novelty song. But even then I can't hide that I really like this song. It's a really basic sugary confession, but I think it works incredibly well in its simplicity. A little teenybopper about the themes of infatuation and longing, not sappy nor sneary where a lot of Teen Pop songs tend to fail (sometimes spectacularly). It's actually so simple and not over-the-top with its teenage attitude that it actually gathered a wide appeal among the adult demography (charting even very high on the "Adult Top 10" and "Adult Contemporary" Billboard charts). And that's probably the magic of this song: a innocent well-crafted piece that's just trying to be catchy and sweet, and that's ok!
The string arrangements that pop each time and the build-up towards the chorus are incredibly addicting. Even the clip is pretty hilarious. Overall one of the greatest Pop classics of this decade.
9/10

That's ok, I think it's pretty hard in general to dissociate songs and overall pop culture with own personal experiences. That's why one might maybe more objective when evaluating a song's quality when they didn't live through its era than someone who did and was skewed positively/negatively. 

Having lived through all of the 2010s I also have naturally my own biases in favor of/against certain songs which I will try to put to rest as much as possible. That's one of main the reasons I made this list in the first place: see if I'm able to reevaluate certain songs after all these years .

I think positive influence from nostalgia isn't that bad, especially if I explain why I like(d) so much in the first place. It's more interesting in comparison to "I hate this song cuz it was so overplayed!!!"-type of arguments

As for 2010, I'm personally not a massive fan of (and wasn't really at the time either) and still think that it's a bit of an overrated year (on here especially), so the nostalgia towards the songs at least isn't particularly strong. I like my underappreciated underdogs of 2013 & 2015 a deal better

Justin Bieber - What Do You Mean? (2015)


The true comeback single that marked a big shift in Justin Bieber's career (aside from maybe "Where Are Ü Now" but who even remembers that song?). Gone is the little high-pitched teenager so up of himself with a lousy selection of songs that made him buttloads of haters on the internet, here comes the matured adult artist that learned from past mistakes but also has better producers. And with a great sense of vengeance he unleashed this highly mellow track to earth that went and became a massive, marking a new renaissance for the artist. The lyrics on this are still a bit on the clunky side. I appreciate that Justin promotes the act of trying to understand your partner when they're so indecisive and with constant mood swings to the point of conflict. But "What Do You Mean?" sounds like a bizarrely vague and ingenuine attempt to connect to that person, with not seemingly enough payoff. And basing your whole chorus around that confusing sentiment is pretty asinine.
THOUGH I really believe that the great production value strongly outshines the few drawbacks of the lyrics. This song along with "Cheerleader" popular around the same time were strong promoters of the new and fresh, summery sound of Tropical House, and I particularly think that genre is made for Pop crossovers. All the little touches here are just great, from the clock ticking simulating time passing to the pan flutes in the last chorus. "What Do You Mean?" is a little pleasure to take in once in a while.
7/10

Drake - God's Plan (2018)



Drake certainly dominated 2018 with a whopping amount of three megahits that were completely inescapable. Guess which one I liked the most. When it comes to "God's Plan", uhm, I guess it's a quotable enough song like people claim it so hard, though I never particularly cared about that kind of stuff. I do kind of think it does have some clever lines, but half the time the lyrics are so straight and basic.
Overall the whole song is kind of non-descript which I think works ok when it comes to Drake. I'm guessing it's about one boasting about the things in live or their own actions being god-send or something, but there's also some basic emotional state discourse. It's not remarkable but the vagueness is sort of unique for mainstream rap so I giving it a pass.

The one thing that doesn't sit right with me though, and probably to a lot of people in general, is how sleepy and monotonous Drake's interpretation seems on the track. There's no energy or bite, and it's seems more like dooze-fest. Drake does have this kind of dooziness quite often, but usually the production complements him well. Here the ambient trance pads work honestly completely against him and only reinforces his seeming sleep talking. The tone is so samey, the song feels like one plateau, with the production having to pause to tell you it's the chorus otherwise you wouldn't be able to notice. At one point around the second verse or so Drake heavens his delivery with more punch, and it's great but it's 5 seconds long, and I just wished the whole song is like that.

It's not BAD since I think it works fairly well as a chill-out, relaxing track where Drake just spits his own feelings and thoughts. But then again there's not much positive I can pinpoint otherwise. It's just kind of there actually, and let's face it: even the video clip completely overshadows the song.
5/10

That's 3.5 points too low don't you think?

I heard Get Lucky by Daft Punk. Another 10/10 imo.