This year Kacey Musgraves offered the world this metaphorical hug with "Rainbow," a sweetly affirmative lullaby about how you too are good and strong and worthy, even when you feel like digging a hole in the ground and going to live there forever. Arguably the newest festival to be considered among Europe's absolute elite, Mad Cool is a huge rock, indie and electronic music festival that takes place in the Spanish capital.

--Shelton returned to country airwaves in a massive way with the attention-grabbing, Southern rock-inflected “God’s Country.” From the song’s opening riff, Shelton immediately captivates. -- Panamanian artist Sech took the music world by storm with his soothing vocals and sensual urban fusion melodies when he released “Otro Trago,” which translates to “Another Drink,” from his debut studio album, Like the ingredients in its title, Lewis’ “Red Bull & Hennessy” is a high-test musical cocktail made from ingredients that evoke two eras: The music, a retro blast of sweet, sweet ‘70s L.A. rock seduces with After releasing 15 one-minute songs on her imaginative 2018 debut album, If there were doors remaining for BLACKPINK to bust through, they were evaporated by the first horn blasts of "Kill This Love," a song that sounds practically biblical in its sonic might. Billboard is part of MRC Media and Info, a division of MRC. But who would have thought that Ariana Grande’s cash-flow anthem, arriving late to that party in January, would go the hardest? As Larsson Songs are getting shorter and hip-hop is as voracious as ever when it comes to borrowing from other genres and sounds, but Maxo Kream’s “Meet Again” is 5+ minutes of classic storytelling rap.

Bieber has spent the past few years making guest appearances across genres, and although "10,000 Hours" didn't achieve the Hot 100-topping level of success that Joyful and infectious, Burna Boy’s “Anybody” is danceable almost to the point of imperative.

For the skeptic reader, we present "Now That I Found You": a perfect pop song about the early honeymoon period of a relationship, and the intense optimism you feel when it's just starting out. "Hey, yeah, whoa-ho, I'm on a roll” took over Twitter -- and club dance floors -- after the subversive reimagination of Nine Inch Nails' Britney and Rihanna have been quiet, Beyoncé has been experimenting, and Gaga has shapeshifted beyond the confines of the outré-pop that defined her turn-of-the-decade coming out party. Lil Tecca’s summer reign not only consisted of him usurping the throne as the premier SoundCloud king, but netting a top five hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Ransom.” The buzzy record finds Tecca stiff-arming thirsty fans creeping in his DMs, while pledging to wipe out the competition with his “twin glocks.” The Internet Money-produced track even received The tender-but-rueful breakup ballad “Slide Away” so perfectly captures a specific moment in time, much like what Ariana Grande did first on “'Seventeen' just feels like my New York song," Sharon Van Etten told There is hesitation in calling “In My Room” (and fellow one-off release Shaed's been having dreams, and in 2019, many of them came true. -- Khalid's sweet falsetto is perfectly deployed in the chorus of "Talk," the lilting smash single from sophomore LP iLoveMakonnen had been waiting for a second pervasive pop hit since 2014's "Tuesday."

“Was it really that long ago?” Clairo considers about her last fight with an ex, wondering if “I should let go” to the tune of wistful guitar strums. It’s a vivid description of one of those edge-of-a-cliff moments, those times when people begin to understand where the phrase “my heart is in my throat” really comes from. The first official single of Ozuna’s forthcoming album "Ruin My Life" starts sweetly, with Larsson drawing out the phrase “I miss you.” But as the drums build, so too do the layers of her crystaline voice, culminating in a rushed admission about a toxic relationship: I want you in my life, pain be damned, because the alternative is worse. Over a delectable beat, the group trades endearing lines on their ever-expanding global adoration, while fan-turned-collaborator Halsey proves to be more than capable of sharing the track (Another collaboration between Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber is in the books, and it’s guaranteed to have you "Burning" stands out among the rest of debuting album Three years after Fletcher established a following with her empowering 2016 anthem It only takes one listen to get this earworm chorus -- which brilliantly kicks off Shawn Mendes' latest single -- lodged in your brain for hours. The song -- which recalls the same yearning tone as the country trio's breakout single "Need You Now" -- perfectly captures that fear of the unknown, thanks to Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley's hopeless harmonies. 66 on the Hot 100, the "New Rules"-esque kiss-off was one of the winter’s most pleasantly unexpected bops. It's all combined to make this final year of the 2010s one of the least-predictable pre-summer seasons we've had in a long time. But those club anthems don't quite rule the way they used to, so she switched it up with this pep talk to a brokenhearted BFF. Would Combs make a great beer pong partner? -- When Whitney Houston starred in the 1996 remake of You won't find a better opening to a 2019 song than this: "So I heard the bad news/ Nobody likes me and I'm gonna die alone in my bedroom." Here are our staff's 100 favorite songs of 2019 -- songs that either were released or peaked on the The dance challenge has been an integral part of pop music’s last decade and a half, but music needed a new bona fide line dance, and in the waning moments of the 2010s, Blanco Brown delivered. -- An unlikely combination of three very different alt-leaning acts, "I've Been Waiting" is far more seamless than it has any right to be, finding common ground in the artists' shared pop sensibilities. The two make a mismatched but perfect pair on this clever snapshot of an on-again, off-again relationship, where intentional sonic discord echoes emotional turmoil.