Our no. 1 songs: 2018

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An Afro-futurist universe with funk and lots of theater (and a big nod to Prince), a potent, political gut punch from a beloved actor and comedian, era-defining protest anthems and more.

Note: This is a recurring series in celebration of All Songs Considered’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	It's All Songs Considered. I'm Robin Hilton, and all year long, we've been celebrating our 25th anniversary by looking back at our number one songs from across the years.
0:10.3	We're doing a different year each week. Stephen Thompson here. Hey, Stephen.
0:13.5	Hello, Robin. So we are up to 2018, and we've been playing a little bit of name that tune. We each play a song for each other, we see if the other person can remember it. I think you mentioned at some point along the way here. Hopefully it will be recent enough that it won't be that hard for us to guess what it is. We are up to 2018 and I'm, I think I might know what you're going to play, but why don't you go ahead and tee it up and hit it and I'll see if I've got it right
0:40.8	Oh man, there's a lot to choose from this year
0:42.7	I'm gonna go with this one
0:48.8	All right, it's Prince
0:51.3	Yeah, right
0:52.5	Ginell Monet Correct All right, it's Prince. Yeah, right.
0:57.3	Janelle Monet.
0:58.0	Correct.
1:00.4	But I can't get the song.
1:01.4	You'll definitely get it.
1:02.4	You'll get it before the chorus. Yeah, baby, don't make me spell it out for you.
1:08.9	You keep on asking me the same questions
1:12.0	why
1:12.8	and second guess in all my
1:15.0	intentions
1:16.2	should know by the way
1:18.4	I use my compression
1:20.1	that you got the answers
1:22.7	to my confessions
1:24.3	make me feel
	...

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