Song of the decade

Does a decade's worth of music mean anything anymore? To me, it doesn't feel like it, and hasn't really since the '90s, which probably just means that I'm old. Time flies and a lot of life is happening, so I'm just getting around to taking a look at the past decade. Rather than serving up a big list, I've decided to simply crown my most-played song of the twenty-teens.

The winner is '90s survivor Robyn with "Dancing on My Own," which was released in June 2010 as lead single from the excellent Body Talk album (my #9 album for the decade, including music from all decades, per Last.fm), and which she cowrote and coproduced with Patrik Berger. It's a devastating dance music ballad, all swirling synths and heartbreak, that should have shot an arrow through the heart of the pop music audience. It is the epitome of the melancholy cast against a euphoric upbeat arrangement, which defines so much of my favorite music. How does a song this brilliant (and featured prominently in HBO's Girls) not even crack the Billboard Hot 100? Despite making no impression on the chart, it did, deservedly, go platinum in the U.S.

RIP Kenny Rogers

Whenever I think about Kenny Rogers, I always remember my late Aunt Jackie kindly giving me her copy of The Gambler album around 1983. Perhaps appropriately, we were in a house on a little dirt road in a speck of a town — New Site, Mississippi. Rogers was huge when I was a kid, and "The Gambler" was a fun tune for all ages. I also love that album's "The Hoodooin' of Miss Fanny Deberry," about a girl who walks barefoot down a gravel road and sleeps with the devil. And The Gambler album has one of the coolest covers ever. Elsewhere, "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" with his band The First Edition from 1969 is a killer tune about a veteran, and The Killers gave it a worthy cover back in the 2000s. "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" is a hoot of a song title — was Morrissey listening? Rogers was one of the original country crossovers, and he made country and pop more fun.

In his final words
I found an ace that I could keep