Our no. 1 songs: 2012

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The flood gates open to K-Pop, plus a feel-good rock anthem (from a band that hasn’t released anything since), a pop juggernaut that became the year’s “song of summer,” and more.

Note: This is a recurring feature in celebration of the show’s 25th anniversary. A shorter version of this episode ran earlier in the year.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you have a question that no one in your life can help with? Something that makes the people around you go, yikes, what a weird question. Well, Freak, here on How to Do Everything, we want to help you out. Each week, we get fantastic experts to answer your questions. People like U.S. Poet Laureate Adelimone, bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, and rapper Rick Ross. Season two, just launched to go listen to How to Do Everything from NPR.
0:24.1	It's all songs considered.
0:25.4	I'm Robin Hilton.
0:26.1	We're looking back at our number one songs from the past 25 years as part of the show's
0:30.9	anniversary, our quarter century anniversary, doing a different year each week.
0:35.7	Stephen Thompson here, as always. It's great to be here, Robert.
0:39.2	So, Stephen, when we talked about our favorite songs from 2011, you sort of telegraphed that 2012
0:45.2	was going to be a tough year for us to narrow down. So what's the first thing that you think of? Well,
0:51.4	maybe not the first thing, but maybe your favorite thing or what takes you back?
0:54.6	Man, there are so many directions that we could have gone here. There were several completely inescapable pop hits. There were tons of great discoveries.
1:03.8	It's a hard year to nail down just because there is such an overwhelming number of terrific options to go with when you say what is the best song of 2012.
1:12.4	But to me, the one that I have gone back to over and over and over again, arguably my favorite
1:18.5	song of that year, and certainly one that has best stood the test of time, is this one.
1:31.1	A tornado flew around my room before
1:33.2	you came. Excuse the message
1:35.3	made. It usually doesn't
1:37.2	rain. Well, Frank Ocean.
1:39.9	Uh, thinking, thinking about you?
1:41.4	Correct. Yeah.
1:42.2	Yeah.
1:42.3	Don't shed tears, but boy they poor. When I'm thinking about you, who. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking about you.
1:45.2	When I'm thinking about you,
	...

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