Here we are! The top 20 most popular songs of the 2010s. We spent four days swimming through the memories of the songs that weren't quite big enough, but we've finally arrived to the list of heavy hitters. The songs that made the biggest impact on this past decade, at least in terms of chart performance. Given that there might be a number of people who check out this portion of the list instead of the other four sections, I'll spend a bit more detail explaining what this is for any newcomers. I've been referring to this project this week as the capstone to my Billboard Project that I've spent much of the past decade on. I started back in 1958 and went through each year and decade, creating lists of the most popular songs. Before I even started doing that, I was tracking this past decade we just finished, so revealing this list feels like a decades-long project that I've been super excited to share. And now I get to!
As far as methodology goes, this is me tracking just the top 10. And it's using my own tracking system where I give the No. 1 song 10 points, with a one-point sliding scale for the rest of the top 10. Is it the most efficient system? Perhaps not. In fact, I've recently created a new tracking system that I think gives more accurate results. But since I've used the same exact system on every other yearly list that I've posted on this blog, it only felt right to finish it off here. Regardless of what system I use, the top song will probably still be the same. In fact, looking at Billboard's "official" end-of-decade list for the 2010s, our No. 1 songs match. And most of the top 20 are also the same, including four of the top five, just in a slightly different order. So I don't think things would look too terribly different, so I feel comfortable with this. Personally I also weighted 2013-2019 differently since that's when Billboard implemented YouTube into their formula. That made songs last longer in the top 10. And songs that spanned two decades were included in the decade where they had the most points. But that doesn't apply to any of these 20 songs, just a few that showed up in previous sections. Anyways, I hope you've enjoyed this journey. If any questions arise about anything, feel free to let me know!
20- "One More Night" - Maroon 5
19- "All About That Bass" - Meghan Trainor
18- "Call Me Maybe" - Carly Rae Jepsen
17- "bad guy" - Billie Eilish
16- "Perfect" - Ed Sheeran
15- "We Are Young" - fun. featuring Jannelle Monae
14- "Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)" - Post Malone & Swae Lee
13- "We Found Love" - Rihanna featuring Calvin Harris
12- "Party Rock Anthem" - LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett & GoonRock
11- "rockstar" - Post Malone featuring 21 Savage
10- "Without Me" - Halsey
9- "God's Plan" - Drake
8- "Somebody That I Used to Know" - Gotye featuring Kimbra
7- "That's What I Like" - Bruno Mars
6- "Despacito" - Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber
5- "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B
4- "Old Town Road" - Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus
3- "Shape of You" - Ed Sheeran
2- "Closer" - The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey
1- "Uptown Funk" - Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars
