The 21 best songs of 2018 so far, ranked

Tidal

The first half of the year in music has been eventful, to say the least. 

A Beyoncé and Jay-Z joint album just dropped amid a string of album releases from Kanye West, and a high-profile rap beef between Drake and Pusha-T appears to still be percolating. 

Meanwhile, indie groups like MGMT, Beach House, and The Internet have released some of their best music in years.

Here are the 21 songs that we've gravitated toward the most in 2018 so far:

Prior to suffering a ruthless diss track from Pusha-T, Drake spent 19 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 this year for his singles "God's Plan" and "Nice For What." The former track, a buoyant pop song that drew from well-tread but effective sounds of Drake's back catalog, featured an uplifting music video, in which the Canadian rapper donated the video's nearly million-dollar budget to residents of Miami, Florida.

The UK electronic duo Disclosure's first release in over two years came in the form of an engrossing five-minute single that sampled the Malian folk singer Fatoumata Diawara. Jazz-style keys and light synths surround an infectious sample from Diawara, which the pair loop and distort throughout.

Jack White's protean and bizarre album "Boarding House Blues" featured a stellar single in the prog-rock, gospel-tinged "Over and Over and Over." White referred to the track as his "white whale" upon its release in March, after he previously attempted to record it multiple times to no avail, including for a collaborative project with Jay-Z that never came to fruition. 

The electric lead single from a concept album challenging drug addiction and various societal ills, J. Cole's "ATM" finds the rapper putting in a dexterous performance in service of a singular hit song about the trappings of wealth. A surreal, satiric music video accompanied the track. 

Preceding the string of seven-song albums that Kanye West has released in the past month, The Weeknd took a similarly minimalist approach to his six-track project "My Dear Melancholy," which in solid songs like the Skrillex-produced "Wasted Times" harkened back to the hazy vibes of the "Trilogy" mixtapes that kicked off his career, but with sharper, matured songwriting. 

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