the twenty best songs

the top five

1. no tears left to cry — a song about grief that refuses to sound like one. it changes tempo and mood in its first thirty seconds and then keeps changing its mind, and the vocal stays deliberately weightless over the top of it. the closest thing to a consensus pick in the catalogue.
2. into you — the best pop production she has ever been given. the build is almost cruelly patient, the release is exactly where it needs to be, and it peaked at thirteen, which remains the single most obvious injustice on her chart record.
3. we can't be friends (wait for your love) — cold synths over a disco bassline, and a vocal that stays flat on purpose until it does not. the most controlled thing on eternal sunshine.
4. honeymoon avenue — the fan-canonical debut opener. a string arrangement that keeps swelling past where a debut album normally stops, ending on the first whistle note most listeners ever heard from her.
5. thank u, next — a song about surviving people rather than about beating them, which is a much harder register to hit, delivered at conversational volume over almost nothing.

six through twelve

1. god is a woman — the most physically impressive vocal on any of her singles.
2. pov — the argument for positions in one track. close-mic'd, unhurried, uninterested in being impressive.
3. dangerous woman — the guitar figure, and the first time the persona and the voice were pointed in the same direction.
4. breathin — a panic-attack song built as a euphoric one. it works because the two readings never resolve.
5. the way — 2013, a Mac Miller verse, and a piano loop that still sounds like summer.
6. side to side — a genuinely funny record, which is not a thing pop is often willing to be.
7. imagine — the whistle register used structurally rather than as a stunt, which is rare even from her.

thirteen through twenty

1. yes, and? — a four-on-the-floor house pulse and a piano figure quoting early-90s club records rather than the 70s the artwork implied.
2. break free — the most efficient pop record she has made. not the best; the most efficient.
3. ghostin — grieving one person while with another, on an album that sold enormously. the least commercial decision in the catalogue.
4. love me harder — the weeknd duet that made the my everything pivot make sense.
5. positions — a number one that sounds like an album track, in the best way.
6. hate that i made you love me — one of the sparsest arrangements she has ever released as an a-side, and it went to number one anyway.
7. 7 rings — enormous, inescapable and considerably less interesting than everything above it. sequencing a list honestly means saying so.
8. daydreamin' — the deep cut. if you want to know what she can actually do, this and honeymoon avenue are the two to play someone.

every one of these is in the catalogue with its credits, its chart run and a note on what it is doing — and every entry links out to spotify, apple music and youtube, because a list of song titles you cannot hear is a poster rather than an article.