DrogeMiester's Top 10 FAVORITE SONGS of 2018

Those of you who have been following my weekly Billboard Analysis posts throughout 2018 will know that I've been doing a lot of complaining at the state of the Billboard Hot 100. I've even become so frustrated that I've stopped covering a lot of the new arrivals, especially since album bombs have flat-out plagued the Hot 100 this year like a rotten, smelly, destructive disease that almost caused me to give up on this whole weekly post. Truth be told, though, it's not been a bad year for music. It's just been a bad year for POPULAR music. There was a lot of great songs that charted. They just didn't do as well as I would've liked them to, which is what made this year frustrating. Point in case, a few weeks ago on my Facebook page, I created a top 10 list, with 10 honorable mentions, based on new entries on Billboard's year-end Hot 100. And I struggled to find 20 songs worthy of that list. But in doing this list here, I could've honestly done a top 50 and still been forced to cut songs I really liked. And out of those 20 songs from said list of year-end Billboard hits, only one of them made the final cut here, with a second one being included the honorable mentions. So yeah, that's the type of year it's been. Which is why I'm honestly excited to share this list of my favorite songs of 2018.

As far as my parameters here go, songs that are eligible to be included are new songs that debuted on the Billboard Hot 100  during the calendar year of 2018. So no, this is not based on Billboard's year-end Hot 100, nor do I consider just any song that was written and released to the public in 2018. Just the songs that debuted on the Hot 100 during 2018. I also had to include the additional parameter of it being a "new" song because I ran into a bit of a conundrum in 2016 when Leonard Cohen passed away, resulting in his original version of "Hallelujah" to chart for the first time. It didn't seem fair to include that in the list that year, even though it would've obviously been the best song. We've also had a yearly tradition recently of classic Christmas songs debuting on the charts during the holiday season. And while it would be fun to include "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Sleigh Ride" or "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" on my list this year, I didn't consider them as eligible because they're not new. I don't necessarily have a specific definition of what "new" means in this instance. I just take it case by case. So with all of that out of the way, I proudly present to you my top 10 favorite songs of 2018, with 10 honorable mentions in the comment section.

10- "I'll Never Love Again" - Lady Gaga 


9- "The Champion" - Carrie Underwood featuring Ludacris 


8- "Back to You" - Selena Gomez


7- "Shallow" - Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper


6- "Zombie" - Bad Wolves


5- "Sober" - Demi Lovato


4- "Always Remember Us This Way" - Lady Gaga


3- "lovely" - Billie Eilish & Khalid 


2- "Found / Tonight" - Lin Manuel Miranda & Ben Platt


1- "Head Above Water" - Avril Lavigne