Favourite songs of 2016

As usual it's Kieron Gillen rules – one song per artist, with the rest of the body of work pushing things up the list. This saves me from doing a separate albums rundown, although interestingly this year most of the songs below have an album behind them. I'm not on trend – for a couple of years now it has been assumed that YouTube and Spotify (as well as a general pop culture shift away from rock music) will kill off the album. Perhaps that's still to come, but for now it looks like artists are still finding value in presenting their music in 30 to 50 minute suites – they still want to control the context in which an individual song is experienced. As someone to prefers to look at the intentions of creators rather than the way a work travels through the culture when it's released, this is welcome. I'm still suspicious of algorithms and playlists ordering music for me. It's better to trust the producers.

20. Martha - 11:45, Legless in Brandon

This just in, because I only heard of these guys a week ago. A pop-punk four piece from Durham – a bit like Los Campesinos! without the anguish, or blink-182 if they grew up with a sense of British irony. And like the latter in their prime, mostly singing about teenage love, which is more like a mixture of lust and idolatry. 'Legless in Brandon' is my current favourite from their album, because the hook is timeless: 'you’re good for my mind, but not my productivity'.

19. Kero Kero Bonito - Trampoline

Another future classic from these guys. This one a confidence boost, the trampoline as a metaphor for picking yourself up when you're down, and being able to jump higher next time. As with the best KKB, the seemingly silly and trivial becomes a manifesto for better living.

18. Kamaiyah - I'm On (prod. Drew Banga)

Another pick me up. Kamaiyah says her mother was absent and her father did drugs, and money was a constant source of stress growing up. Living debt free ('I don't have to finance') is therefore a source of celebration. And that celebration is inclusive – witness all those people singing along to Kamaiyah's performance in the video. And it's warm and inviting, thanks to the gentle swing of Drew Banga's production.

17. Britney Spears - Private Show (prod. Tramaine "Young Fyre" Winfrey)

One of the best things about Glory is the way Spears experiments with her voice throughout the album, nowhere more so than this song, which understandably proved divisive (a friend of mine thought it was 'horrid'). I think it's great, and betrays a sense of confidence and optimism after what has been a rough ride of a career. The gaucheness of her delivery in the pre-chorus ('wrrkit, wrrkit, boy watch me wrrkit') feels like a cheeky wink at the listener – daring them to accept the song in the way Spears wants to sing it.

16. Dinosaur Jr. - Goin Down

I'm just glad these guys are still around, 30 or so years after You're Living All Over Me, which many regard as their crowning achievement. 'Going Down' kicks off their new album with a monster riff and a blistering guitar solo, the heavy metal theatrics softened by J Mascis's unassuming, slightly flat vocal. It's a variation on the same formula, but that's OK by me. Long may they continue.

15. Katy B - Honey (prod. Kaytranada)

Katy B's latest album is a mixed bag, and doesn't quite work as a showcase for Rinse in the way On A Mission did. The most successful song is rightly put at the top. 'Honey' plays to Katy B's strengths – describing in microscopic detail the moment when a connection between lovers or dancers is made. The charged atmosphere finally erupts with Katy B's vocal overdubs in the final chorus. Slightly over the top, yes, but Kaytranada's hypnotically steady beat needs some kind of release. In that sense, it's a perfect evocation of female desire.

14. Junior Boys - Baby Give Up On It

Junior Boys's latest album works on similar principles to the Katy B song above – utilising the regular rhythms of house and techno to explore the workings of desire. Big Black Coat feels slightly older, and perhaps a bit sadder – Jeremy Greenspan describes how he took inspiration from lonely-looking guys walking around his town, who he imagined were frustrated by life and women. This track's lyrics reflect those concerns ('I don't want you anymore'), but sonically it still sounds like a come on. The ambiguity of a phrase like 'give up on it' encapsulates that tension perfectly. Whether the cut up vocals at the end signal a release from a fragmenting relationship, or its renewal, is impossible to work out.

13. Jammz - Just Eat (prod. Anz)

Jammz is usually all about serious issues, which is why having him sit back and tell a funny story is a good look for him. For sure, we still end up with a tirade, because Jammz is Jammz and his flow always conveys a sense of escalating stress-levels. That bottled up frustration is pure grime, but so is a sense of the quotidian and absurd (cf. D Double E in a cab below).

12. Levelz - Rowdy Badd

Much of the beginning of my 2016 was spent with the debut mixtape from Manchester rap and production supergroup Levelz, which served as a useful corrective to Mayoral hopeful Andy Burnham's laments about the state of the city's music scene.

11. Dej Loaf - Bitch Please (prod. DDS)

Imperial nonchalance on top of another sparkling production from DDS – so great Dej doesn't even bother with a chorus. She says she doesn't eat pie but wants you to bake it anyway. I'm not arguing.

10. Jeremih feat. Stefflon Don, Krept & Konan - London (prod. Soundz)

Obvious biases apply, but this is the best track on Jeremih's Late Nights Europe mixtape, mostly because you can actually dance to it. It's London by way of Jamaican dancehall, with a stellar performance from up and comer Stefflon Don.

9. The Hotelier - Piano Player

I found this year's followup to NoPlace a bit underwhelming, but given that NoPlace might be the best emo album since Cork Tree, perhaps that shouldn't be surprising. Goodness leaves behind the disintegration and despair, and reveals the band to be hippies at heart. 'Piano Player' employs a little bit more studio trickery, Holden sounds a little bit more like Michael Stipe, and the chorus drives through the imperative to 'sustain' by repeating the word over and over. And all of that propelled by an urgent drumbeat bashing all the way through the song's five and a half minutes.

8. Trim - Up to Speed (prod. Asa & Sorrow)

Asa & Sorrow's muscular production spurs Trim to get back on the warpath. This is high definition grime, with weighty bass squelches and horror film strings, and it adds authority to Trim's boasts of drowning out the competition. There is a nod to the insecurity that has permeated his work of late ('no matter how irrelevant I might have been'), but 'Up to Speed' is a needed reminder that Trim is at his strongest when fighting from a position of weakness.

7. Radwimps - Zenzenzense

This is another recent discovery, and a new departure for me, given that I listen to almost no music in a language other than English. Radwimps are a phenomenon in Japan, and this is taken from their excellent soundtrack to Your Name (my favourite film of 2016). The song is used to convey a sense of youthful, almost vertiginous, exuberance – where sensations and emotions pile up faster than your ability to process them.

6. Chance the Rapper feat. Saba - Angels (prod. Lido & The Social Experiment)

Chance sometimes feels like a latter day William Blake, chatting to angels in his back garden, sometimes like Walt Whitman, expounding on his own supreme excellence. No wonder the video for 'Angels' casts him as a superhero flying over the skies of Chicago, charged up with God's grace. With Saba's timpani backed pre-chorus leading into Chance's horn-fuelled chorus, the feeling of elevation is palpable.

5. Dawn Richard - Lazarus (prod. Machinedrum)

I'm still digesting Richard's final installment of her 'heart' trilogy of albums, which are as technically impressive and emotionally involving as anything put together by Radiohead. Redemption suggests a happy ending after the epic warfare of Goldenheart and the angst of Blackheart. 'Lazarus' suggests it, anyway, playing with images of ascension and appropriating traditionally male metaphors of the wolf's hunger and the king's ego. Every album review has picked up on this song's line: 'I didn't change, I became'. It's a highlight, in other words. And it might be what settling into your identity sounds like.

4. Ariana Grande - Into You (prod. Max Martin)

Dangerous Woman is a return to form after Grande's muddled sophomore effort, and it's biggest single is its most immediate entry-point. Max Martin can probably churn these out in his sleep by now, but the scale of this production's chorus is well matched by Grande's powerful voice. It's a deserved hit, and hearing it played on the radio and in shops around London goes to show that good pop can still find an audience.

3. Capo Lee feat. D Double E - Mud (JD. Reid Remix)

It's been Sir Spyro's year as far as grime's concerned. My 2015 favourite 'Topper Top' finally got a release, and his productions for Ghetts, Stormzy and P Money have all become anthems. This one for newcomer Capo Lee is my favourite, however, utilising the traditional grime technique of rhyming each bar with the same word and inflecting it with different meanings. Unfortunately for Spyro, I've fallen a little bit harder for JD. Reid's remix, which gives the ominous original a shiny makeover, and proves a better fit for D Double's cartoony rant at his cabdriver in the second verse.

2. Beyoncé feat. Jack White - Don't Hurt Yourself (prod. Derek Dixie)

I found the happily-married Beyoncé of the self-titled album strangely uninvolving. Tellingly, the most interesting song on that album for me was 'Jealous', which was the one that hinted at the double-standards and double-shift that still structures many marriages. So when Lemonade took that song and made an entire album out of it, I got right on board. Unlike 'Jealous', 'Don't Hurt Yourself' no longer redirects the rage at marital injustice inwards – it lashes out at the source: 'tonight I'm fucking up all your shit, boyyy'. That line, with the full force of Beyoncé's voice behind it, sends a shiver down the spine.

1. Johnny Foreigner - The Worst of Us

I liked the last album, but did wonder if the band were doubling down on a successful formula rather than trying to move beyond it. Turns out I needn't have worried. Mono No Aware is more adventurous with its song structures – melting together JF's pop punk influences into new forms. 'The Worst of Us' is a jagged thing, speeding up and juddering to a halt when you least expect it. It sounds like running down a series of dead ends – which is exactly what the song is about. The band sing about being trapped in grey cities, 'proxy the beach' and the sense of possibility that entails. Settling down like your parents means the world closing in around you, all escape routes shut off. But perhaps that's inevitable – 'I'm convinced I need you to stabalise'. Adventure entails risk – dropping out of your life is hard. 'The Worst of Us' is about finding that point of stability from which you can go and find those 'white mountains and silver seas'. I got married this year, and all of that rings very true. And it goes to show that JF are also a band to grow old with.