The Best Songs of 2018 (So Far)

Congratulations, you've already taken the first step toward being ahead of the curve this year when it comes to new music. If you want to know the best new songs of 2018 before the year-end lists (or before all your friends are listening to them), then you've come to the right place. If you want to be the person saying, "Have you heard [insert good song here]?" then take a look at this ongoing list of our best songs of 2018. We'll be updating this all year, so keep checking back.

JANELLE MONAE — "MAKE ME FEEL"

Janelle Monae can do anything she wants. She can act in a Best Picture-winning film. She can be a pop star. She can make Afrofuturist funk. She can make elastic electro '80s R&B like "Make Me Feel"—a song that embraces all the sexual energy of Prince that you can almost feel those mouth noises mixed into to the beat.

SUPERCHUNK — "WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE"

How many times have we heard this phrase over the last year? But certainly no song has summed up this specific time more succinctly—and without mentioning a certain world leader's name—better than Superchunk. The anthemic title track from the new album is a cathartic collective observation on the state in which we currently find ourselves: "To see the rot in no disguise / Oh what a time to be alive / The scum, the shame, the fucking lies."

SOB X RBE — "LIFESTYLE"

There's a perfect balance at play on SOB X RBE tracks. Yhung T.O.'s seductive club choruses are the perfect packaging for forceful, dangerous verses. Take "Lifestyle" for example, where Yhung T.O. sings in the chorus, "I remember late nights all alone / I remember long talks with my cousin through her phone / RIP all of my niggas dead and gone / Give it all to bring you back and to bring my niggas home." It's followed by an opening verse from Slimmy B where he raps about people getting murdered at stoplights.

U.S. GIRLS — "ROSEBUD"

What is your Rosebud, you've got to know," asks the chorus of U.S. Girls' "Rosebud." It may be a reference to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, in which a sled named "Rosebud" represented the abandoned innocence and happiness of Charles Foster Kane. This song itself has a haunting vocal aspect to it, like half-forgotten memories are worming their way into your subconscious.

MORMOR — "HEAVEN'S ONLY WISHFUL"

In one of his few interviews, Toronto producer/singer MorMor told Pigeons and Planes that in school, "I kept searching for kids like me, but it never happened. In the end it gave me some good perspective." You can hear that solitude, that self-searching in his debut song, "Heaven's Only Wishful."