Many of us spent 2021 in a state of polarised extremes. A seemingly endless winter lockdown eventually melted into the promise of a hot vax summer; the disappointment of hot vax summer failing to get off the ground dispersed when events and festivals started creeping back into the day-to-day and we began micro-dosing “normal”. Autumn loomed, Omicron reared its head along with the knowledge that this will not end until rich countries stop hoarding vaccines. All this to-ing and fro-ing has been emotionally nauseating. It’s like reading in the back of a car, except the book is shit and you’re not really going anywhere.
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But all journeys need a soundtrack, even – in fact, especially – the hazardous ones. And if nothing else, 2021 has given us a landslide of gut-punching, mind-altering, life-affirming music to ride shotgun on our collective trip to hell.Here, the VICE editorial team presents a list of songs that epitomise the sense of hope and hopelessness of this year, and kept us company in all weather conditions.There couldn’t have been a more fitting anthem for 2021 than a rework of Linkin Park’s furious declaration of hopelessness “One Step Closer”, by popular culture’s premier chaos goblins 100 gecs. Dylan Brady and Laura Les continued their run of fascinating and irresistible post-everything hijinks into this year, and while Brady’s new version of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” featuring Dorian Electra, Big Freedia and 3OH!3 was almost the best thing the gecs-verse produced this year, this new take on “One Step Closer” has it beat in terms of sheer mayhem. So much of the culture that surrounds us centres on remaking or rebooting for its own sake, often producing results on the spectrum between “underwhelming” and “actually brain-numbing”. Not so with this “One Step Closer” reanimation, which takes a song that genuinely seems to express something about how we experience our relentlessly stressful times, and makes it sound like the way we experience them; like the dark heart of the algorithm. – Lauren O’Neill
HOPELESSNESS
Linkin Park and 100 gecs – “One Step Closer (100 gecs Reanimation)”
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King Woman – “Morning Star”
Snail Mail – “Valentine”
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If 2021 existed on a scale of romance to heartbreak, it would surely lean more towards the latter. Relationships formed during lockdown crumbled under the pressure of summer freedom. People moved on, moved out, realised that their lives needed changing in drastic ways. Long distance relationships finally reached their expiry date as clubs, bars and social events resumed. There were a million Lindsay Jordans, stuck in their own version of “Valentine,” screaming “So why d'you wanna erase me?” to an ex-lover just out of reach. – Daisy Jones Lingua Ignota's Kristin Hayter has long been rummaging through the landfill of despair. Themes of violence against women, the body, and revenge have run through each of her projects, taking the form of all kinds of sounds from operatic splendour to abrasive noise – as close to corporeal as it's possible for music to get – in an effort to articulate trauma ("lingua ignota" Latin for “unknown language”). Her fourth album, SINNER GET READY, takes that trauma and places it within the religious history and generally austere vibe of rural Pennsylvania, where Hayter lived until recently. Reverberating with heavy piano and rumbling drums, "Pennsylvania Furnace" sounds like the fear of God itself – his judgement, his abandonment. "Do you wanna be in hell with me?" she asks, referencing an 18th century legend of the Pennsylvania Dutch, about an iron master who throws his dogs into the furnace for underperforming on a hunt only to see them return and drag him to hell. It's a grim tale of sin and retribution, brought to life as one of the most intense physical experiences you could possibly have while taking a government-sanctioned stroll around the block with your Air Pods. – Emma Garland
Lingua Ignota – “Pennsylvania Furnace”
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No Rome – “Spinning” (Ft. Charli XCX and The 1975)
Lana Del Rey – “White Dress”
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Rooted in her aesthetic strengths of innocence and melancholy, Lana breathily recalls a life before the burdens of business and fame, projecting a lyrical montage of waitressing in a crisp uniform, listening to The White Stripes and drunk talking about life into the early hours of the morning, feeling "like a God". Set to the same strain of lush, last-orders piano balladry established on 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, “White Dress” is the perfect soundtrack for wafting around your flat while reflecting on your life like a nan in an armchair, talking to her grandchildren about how she used to go out dancing too, once. – Emma GarlandHopelessness takes many guises. For a lot of us, especially in the early part of 2021, it meant moping around, curtain twitching to get a look at a passing dog just to feel something, and screaming “I’m sick of making fucking sourdough” in manner of Gemma Collins on Celebrity Big Brother. But hopelessness isn’t just about stasis: It can also be rageful and, ultimately, curiously generative, as Olivia Rodrigo proved on her monster hit “good 4 u”.Following the down-tempo singles “drivers license” and “deja vu”, “good 4 u” was a win for those of us whose favourite genre is “music that sounds like you could run up the wall to it,” and felt like a major arrival for Rodrigo, who this year cemented an unavoidable place in the mainstream. It’s a petty-at-times, constantly furious kiss-off addressed to an ex-boyfriend-turned-”damn sociopath” (this year’s My Chemical Romance “trust me”), and, most of all, a shining beacon of the brilliance that can occasionally come out of feeling really, really shit. – Lauren O’Neill
Olivia Rodrigo – “good 4 u”
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For Those I Love – “I Have A Love”
HOPE
Warmduscher – “Wild Flowers”
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Bree Runway – “HOT HOT”
Tion Wayne and Russ Millions – “Body 2” (Ft. ArrDee, 3x3E1 & ZT, Bugzy Malone, Fivio Foreign, Darkoo, Buni)
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“Body 2” deserves flowers purely for the historic achievement of being the first drill song to hit number one in the UK. But with production that’ll give you frostbite, a list of features longer than Santa’s naughty list for the House of Commons, and an irresistibly clatty verse from 2021’s cheekiest breakout rapper ArrDee, this one takes the crown for ‘British song most likely to cause a lower back injury at literally any function’. – Emma GarlandRemember your first Proper Night Out post-lockdown? How did it end up? Sick in the Lyft home, was it? WhatsApping a cryptic emoji to the ex before your last ex, at 4.03AM? Or was it a big disappointment? You got tired at midnight and slipped home, not used to so many people breathing on your face? Well, “New Shapes” is what the night should have felt like from the beginning. Big, bright synth lines. Key changes. Beats to dance to. Lyrics dripping in potential, excitement: “We could fall in love in new shapes / new shapes.” Scrolling through the YouTube comments, Christine is largely considered the stand-out of this track. “Christine has found her queens,” someone typed, to the tune of 1.1k likes. And it's true – Chris is sick. But it's Caroline's silky saccharine tones that really elevates this to something special. “Maybe we're meant for another dimension, babe,” she sings, liquified autotune tugging on your heart. The three of them will make you want to slam your laptop screen down and go straight to the club. “New Shapes” is everything 2021 was supposed to have been like – and still could. – Daisy Jones
Charli XCX – “New Shapes” (Ft. Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polacheck)
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Sofie & Miss World – “Melody” (Ft. Peanut Butter Wolf)
Danny L Harle / DJ Danny – “On A Mountain”
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Lorde – ”Solar Power”
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