Want to feel old?

Get up in the morning and feel that pain in your lower back. That wasn’t there five years ago, was it?

Also, have one too many drinks and feel the effects for days afterwards, whilst university students binge drink their way through weeks on end and emerge virtually unscathed.

Adulthood – what a blast.

Another way to feel old is to have a look at TIME’s picks for the best songs of the 2010s, because if you’re anything like me, a few of these would have slipped right by unnoticed.

If you click the name of each song mentioned below, you’ll see the YouTube video. See, I care.

Thankfully, I also know the first song mentioned, Adele’s “Rolling In the Deep” (2010), featuring this description:

Songs about love gone wrong remained a pop staple in the 2010s: All the decade’s technological advances didn’t do much for romance, when all was said and done.

The lead single from Adele’s blockbuster second album 21 was a four-minute primal scream shaped into a rolling-thunder epic, with the British belter’s formidable alto making every charge against her ex—abandonment, manipulation, just being a generally bad guy—add up until they were as high as a funeral pyre.

It’s an exercise in pop catharsis that doubles as an exorcism for the demons that lurk after an affair flames out.

It’s a good beat, and I am familiar with it. Double win.

The next three are Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” (2010), Sky Ferreira’s “Everything Is Embarrassing” (2012) (no idea, either), and Luke James’ “I Want You” (2012), before another superstar’s name pops up.

Taylor Swift with “All Too Well” (2012):

Taylor Swift’s 2010s were filled with stadium-sized spectacles that cemented her status as one of the world’s biggest pop stars. This track off 2012’s Red is proof that she became one of music’s grande dames because of her ability to crystallize emotional details. A midtempo guitar ballad with quietly devastating lyrics, “All Too Well” nods to her country-prodigy past, but with the sort of maturity that transforms even the most dramatic moments of one’s life fade into shades of gray.

OK, sure.

The sixth song is Hospitality’s “I Miss Your Bones” (2013), but we’ll skip ahead to Paramore’s “Ain’t It Fun” (2013):

Tennessee emo-pop band Paramore rebooted itself with its 2013 self-titled album, bringing programmed drums and glossy strings into its high-energy guitar-bass-drums mix. It worked like a charm, with vocalist Hayley Williams sounding newly energized by the possibilities of her band’s bigger sound. On “Ain’t It Fun,” she uses that expanded palette—and a feisty gospel choir—to whoop and holler her way through the gnarlier bits of growing up.

Again, if you’re struggling to recognise these tunes, you’re not alone. The eighth song is Dierks Bentley’s “Drunk On a Plane” (2014), which TIME calls “an affecting tale about being stuck with the fallout from a love gone wrong”.

On the home stretch now with the ninth song, Khalid’s “Young Dumb & Broke” (2017):

Flipping the “millennials are killing [x]” trend-piece construct on its head with a smirk and some desert-heat synths, this 2017 single by Houston-based pop prodigy Khalid is an anti-anthem for “young, dumb, broke high school kids.” Its sing-song topline eases it into even the most overstimulated listeners’ minds, but its simmering anxiety about life’s big questions helps it resonate beyond its fade-out.

At the time of writing, this video has more than 626 million views:

Finally, a song you’ve surely heard, given that it was everywhere earlier this year – Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” (2019).

You know, that one with Miley’s old man, Billy Ray Cyrus:

2019’s biggest pop sensation didn’t get there because of TikTok, or the yeehaw movement, or controversies over chart placements. Lil Nas X’s sparse smash—based off a Nine Inch Nails flip sourced from YouTube—gained momentum steadily, then unstoppably, because it’s so much fun to consume, whether in its original barely-two-minutes form, as one of its star-studded remixes, or merely mimicking the hook while around friends. It’s a freshly minted building block for pop, allowing listeners to hear the potential in country, trap, country-trap, and any other hybrid genre that might come to life in the streaming age.

Bop along:

‘Merica.

There you have it – some fodder for the older folks to wax lyrical about how music was better in their day.

I, too, dig the old classics, although these days I live by the ‘anything but Pitbull’ mantra.

[source:time]