The 100 Best Songs of the 2020s So Far – Warungku Terkini

Listen: Alan Braxe / DJ Falcon, “Step by Step” [ft. Panda Bear]

---

32.

Sufjan Stevens: “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” (2023)

God, grief, love, the universe. These are the essentials to understanding the folklore of Sufjan Stevens. With “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” he takes these ingredients, arranges them ornately, and delivers a career-defining reckoning. On the devastating Javelin cut—enlivened with guitalin, piano, and electronic beats—Stevens pleads from the end, beaten down, but not enough to stop him from asking, “Will anybody ever love me, for good reasons, without grievance, not for sport?” one final time.

“Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” becomes all the more unbearable when you learn that it lives in the shadows of Stevens’ only public declaration of his queerness, as Javelin is dedicated to his late partner, Evans Richardson. Suddenly, the lyrics, the pain, are even more visceral, as a famously private storyteller presents his unbridled thoughts during his most public grief. Stevens searches tenaciously for answers, knowing they may be impossible to accept. –Gio Santiago

Listen: Sufjan Stevens, “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?”

---

31.

Wet Leg: “Chaise Longue” (2021)

The Isle of Wight, in the English Channel, isn’t terribly large, but it has a storied history: It was once home to Queen Victoria and the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Charles Dickens vacationed there while writing David Copperfield. Add to its list of notable residents the indie-rock duo Wet Leg, who immediately transcended their local scene on the strength of their debut single, “Chaise Longue.” Rhian Teasdale, like any good post-punk revivalist, sings with an alluring, disaffected deadpan, but she cuts through the pretense with a winking embrace of the deeply unserious, namely her on-the-nose sexual innuendos, including one straight from Mean Girls. A snappy, nonsensical hook cements “Chaise Longue” as delightfully dumb and instantly unforgettable. Teasdale and bandmate Hester Chambers claim they started Wet Leg on a lark and they don’t take their songs too seriously—an approach that, like their island home, turned out to be an assuming front hiding surprisingly fertile creative ground. –Marissa Lorusso

Listen: Wet Leg, “Chaise Longue”

---

30.

Sabrina Carpenter: “Espresso” (2024)

Every supposedly wrong decision Sabrina Carpenter makes during “Espresso” turns out to be the right one. She begins, for instance, with the chorus and not a verse, immediately telling us about some “he” with a whispery nonchalance that suggests we already know his deal. There’s the double “that,” the endless entendre of being “Mountain Dewed,” a string of similes and metaphors so ceaseless it’s hard to keep track of her shifting status as a Nintendo Switch, an amorous angiosperm, and an expert barista. The way she bounces to and from the coffee concept like she has the caffeinated jitters: They make you feel like the boy in the song, the addict who needs to run it back. When Carpenter calls herself stupid at last verse’s end, well… you might chuckle and nod.