Top 100 — Songs Of 2008

He smiled. Outside, a neighbor set off a firework. 2009 was seven minutes away. He put his headphones back on, queued up #100, and hit play.

"The Top 100 Songs of 2008 is not a playlist. It's a life raft. It's the sound of millions of people pressing 'shuffle' on their anxiety. It's Auto-Tuned, it's ridiculous, it's painfully earnest, and it's the only reason we didn't all go insane. This was the year pop music looked at the end of the world and said, 'Okay, but first, let me finish this dance.'" top 100 songs of 2008

Finally, he reached #1. He already knew what it was. He'd known since he started. He smiled

#99: "Viva la Vida" by Coldplay. He’d listened to this on the bus ride to his last final exam, feeling like a medieval king about to conquer his destiny. Now he was a peasant sweeping up the castle. He put his headphones back on, queued up #100, and hit play

He took a sip of flat Coke. #55: "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis. His ex-girlfriend, Sam, had cried to this song the night she broke up with him. He remembered sitting on the curb outside her dorm, watching her silhouette in the window, Leona Lewis belting out the chorus from a laptop speaker. He had to close his eyes for a full minute.

The hours melted. The basement grew dark. #22: "Disturbia" by Rihanna. #18: "Love in This Club" by Usher. Each song wasn't just a track; it was a time-stamped photograph. The sticky floors of the club. The smell of cheap vodka. The feeling of a flip phone buzzing in his pocket. The absolute, terrifying, beautiful uncertainty of being young before the economy collapsed.

Alex put his headphones on. Song #100 was "Closer" by Ne-Yo. He remembered dancing to this at a frat party, trying to impress a girl named Maria. He’d spilled a entire beer on her shoe. He winced, deleted the sentence he’d just typed, and moved on.