Our No. 1 songs: 2021

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve got a funny feeling about the times, stay indoors (together alone), and dream about life on the other side.

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	Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all.
0:11.5	On the web at the Schmidt.org.
0:14.5	A quick note before the show, this episode contains explicit language.
0:19.2	All right, it's all songsed. I'm Robin Hilton,
0:21.7	here is Stephen Thompson. Hey, Stephen. It's good to be here, Robin. So we're in the home stretch
0:26.0	here all the way up to 2021. We're only going to 2024, doing the first 25 years of all
0:32.7	songs considered, starting with 2000 and then going up to 2024 through 2024 2025 TBD.
0:40.8	But let's look at 2021.
0:42.6	What do you think of with music in the year 2021?
0:46.7	Should be a lot easier now.
0:48.3	Well, do I pick my favorite song of 2021?
0:52.0	I bet I know what that is.
0:53.1	Or do I pick the song that most embodies 2021?
0:58.0	Because, you know, 2021 still deep pandemic.
1:00.7	Yeah.
1:01.0	Still, you know.
1:02.2	Well, we're starting to get all the stuff that everyone made during 2020.
1:06.1	Right.
1:06.2	Yeah, you're starting to get pandemic culture.
1:09.7	You're starting to get like culture that is not only something that we enjoyed and
1:14.5	processed during the pandemic, but works that are about the pandemic.
1:17.7	So what do you want?
	...

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