Starting with no. 10: “crisp dubs is the oasis at the end of brain-rot."

9. "Its weepy piano melody swells alongside homemade percussion with some of the most intense, weird, and pulsating vocals Fiona Apple's singular alto has ever offered."

8. "Its messages are ultimately mysterious, as Dylan plunges a just-assassinated John F. Kennedy into the depths of hell, only to continue on with a roll-call of American recordings, but it is unmistakably violent, insidious, and beautiful."

7. "You wonder what today’s long-distance athletes are running for, or maybe what they are running from? On “Runner,” noted admirer of animals and athletes Alex G sketches two characters who attempt to outrun their secrets."

6. “It Must Change,” the album’s opening jaw-dropper, underlines the moral and emotional valencies of that anxious post-COVID moment: an encroaching sense of loss where hatred so often outflanks love—even as those opposing poles of light and dark, as she says, are “just an idea that someone told you.”

5. "“You’re never gonna feel complete/No, you’re never gonna be released.”

3. "Not Like Us” feels like one of the most complicated rap songs ever. No matter what you say about it, you will be a hypocrite in some way. Forcing you to consider your listening habits, like barely any Billboard chart toppers have before."

2. “American tterroristt,” a nine-minute jeremiad for the post-truth era from a guy who’s probed life’s mysteries deeper than you have."

1. "The song is both a staggering work of self-mythology and a first-person treatise on the national state of womanhood."