This is the fourth of five posts listing my 50 favorite songs of 2011. Here’s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and an updated Spotify playlist.

20. Weekend – Smith Westerns

When I went to FYF Fest earlier this year, the Smith Westerns had the same set time as OFF! My friend really wanted to see them (they were awesome), so by the time we got over to the Westerns’ stage their set was almost over. Turns out we got there in the nick of time, because at that point Cullen Omori introduced what he called their “crowd pleasing set” and the band tore into “Weekend”. Omori couldn’t have described the song better. Max Kakacek’s lead guitar practically squeals with delight, bringing to mind some of George Harrison’s Abbey Road-era solos. The Beatles comparison is apt, as the rest of “Weekend” is all sunny chords, soaring melodies. All Die Young was released in the middle of January, but this is a perfect song for summer or, as the Smith Westerns are well aware, a crowded festival.

19. Hello Sadness – Los Campesinos!

The most notable thing about this song is the major contradictions between lyrics and music. “Hello Sadness” is a breakup song, which in the hyper-literate world of Los Campesinos! makes lead singer Garth flotsam dropped overboard, going on to say farewell to courage and embracing sadness. Man, being dumped sucks. All this is accompanied, though, by uptempo drums, alt-strummed guitars, and cheery backup singers. Despite the subject matter, “Hello Sadness” can’t help but be a life-affirming rock anthem.

18. Need You Now – Cut Copy

This song is a textbook example of how to build anticipation. “Need You Now” doesn’t exactly start off slow, but the largely muted synths and Dan Whitford’s low singing voice hint at more to come. Like all the best dance tracks the song builds, adding on backing vocals and fleshing out the drumming. Then, out of nowhere, Whitford enters a new octave and the whole thing explodes into a giant dance party.

17. I Miss You – Beyonce

My one rule in constructing this list was that no artist could have more than two spots on it. In a year as, let’s face it, weak for music as 2011 I could have easily made a top 50 with songs from about 15 artists rather than the 41 that actually occupy the list. However, Beyoncé is too powerful, and her album 4 too good, to not break the rules for. Written by Frank Ocean (in his second of four appearances on this list), “I Miss You” is a truly remarkable pop song. Ocean is better than probably anyone else in music right now at writing lyrics that are honest on a personal level while still feeling universally accessible. Lines like “Words don’t ever seem to come out right/But I still mean them, why is that?” sound great on their own, but gain tremendously from Beyoncé’s singing, which is alternates between fierce and vulnerable as the song calls for it. Muted keyboards and 808s hum just underneath the surface, setting the mood without drawing attention to themselves. There’s no need for syrupy strings or climax-building key changes with a lyrical and vocal performances this good.

16. Love Like a River – Girls

Girls frontman Christopher Owens has said in interviews that when he writes songs he usually has a direct influence in mind. When I listen to “Love Like a River”, I have a hard time picturing it as anything other than an attempt to rewrite “Oh! Darling”. Just listen to the lead guitar! It’s almost literally the exact same riffs. He would have a hard time getting the rhythm section to sound more Beatle-esque if he traveled back in time to 1969 and had Paul and Ringo themselves sit in on the track. 2011 was the year of indie nostalgia, and Owens is its fearless leader. What sets Girls apart, other than the fact that they’re quite frankly better songwriters than their peers, is that even when their influences are at their most obvious, Chris Owens’ singing voice gives their songs a unique personality. His voice is breathy and unpolished, yet capable of carrying a tune and more than capable of carrying truckloads of pathos. In the interview linked above, he explicitly says he had Beyoncé in mind as a singer for this track, and while that would be undeniably awesome, it’s hard to picture anyone other than Chris Owens singing his songs. He is one of the most pathologically sincere lyricists in indie, and only he knows how it feels to be the subject of “Love Like a River”.

15. Limit to Your Love – James Blake

For me, a lot of James Blake’s self-titled debut album straddles the line between sparse and underdeveloped, with about half the album ultimately falling on the wrong side. Blake’s album is the sound of a musician striving to be considered an artist as well as a producer, but his songwriting skills aren’t the sharpest, leading to tracks filled with interesting sounds but little direction. On “Limit to Your Love”, though, Blake thoroughly succeeds. In part, that’s due to the fact that the actual work of songwriting was done by Leslie Feist, leaving Blake to put his unique spin on an already-good song. That doesn’t explain everything, though, because he essentially tried the same trick with a Joni Mitchell song a couple of months ago to decidedly weaker results. The thing about James Blake is that when he’s in singer-songwriter mode rather than dubstep producer mode, his brand of stark keyboards and beats is suited to a very specific kind of lyricism, one light on concrete imagery and dealing with themes of loneliness and isolation. “A Case of You” is great, and Joni Mitchell’s lyrics are brilliant, but the metaphors don’t work well run through synthesizers and set to a drum machine. Blake’s songs succeed when the music is the primary means of conveying emotions and ideas. When it comes together like it does on “Limit to Your Love”, the effect is simultaneously beautiful and devastating.

14. Art of Almost – Wilco

Wilco doesn’t really make great albums anymore. That’s not to say Wilco sucks; any band capable of releasing two albums as perfect as Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot within a three-year span gets a lifetime achievement award in my book. That’s also not to say that their new songs are bad; on the contrary, The Whole Love is one of the most consistently enjoyable albums of this year, and that’s not meant to be nearly as damning as it sounds. It is true, however, that Wilco hasn’t put out an album with great songs from start-to-finish in a nearly a decade. That’s frustrating, because songs like “Art of Almost” prove that Jeff Tweedy et al. are still capable of writing really good music. Reading this article on the recording of the song is eye-popping; Glenn Kotche had been sitting on that drum part for years. Just imagine how many bits and pieces of songs like that are floating around in Wilco’s collective brain, just waiting to be assembled! Maybe you couldn’t build another YHF out of that, but you could certainly get close! Reading the article also makes it clear that these guys are still great musicians aware of what makes songs great; everything they say about the outro to this song, for example, is spot-on. When Nels Cline unleashes his full power as a guitarist, it provides a perfect ending for a song that been slowly building tension for four minutes before going into a double-time outro hinting at an epic close. When the payoff finally comes, it’s huge.

12. Stomp (feat. Greg Porn)/Tip the Scale (feat. Dice Raw)– The Roots (tie)

I couldn’t do it. After breaking my 2-songs-per-artist rule for Beyoncé, I resolved that it wouldn’t happen again. Unfortunately, the flesh is weak, and (spoiler alert) I had to make an exception for the Roots. That’s fine by me, honestly, because undun is one of my favorite albums of the year and it deserves every piece of praise I can heap on it and then some. Besides, if I’d stuck to the rules, numbers 49 and 50 would have been occupied by Danger Mouse+Daniele Luippi and Surfer Blood respectively, and who wants to hear about a couple of songs I didn’t like quite as much as that one off the Noel Gallagher solo project? (The tracks are “Two Against One” and “Miranda”, in case you care). Every track on undun is top-notch, and I could have easily made this a nine-way tie, but in the end “Stomp” and “Tip the Scale” just barely edge out their peers. “Stomp” has an incredible beat, a muscular four-to-the-floor thump of ?uestlove’s bass drum accompanied by snarling guitar not dissimilar to Jay-Z’s “Takeover”. It would be all too easy for a rapper to lose focus on a track like this and take the opportunity to spit fire with total abandon. It’s to Black Thought and Greg Porn’s credit that they perform their verbal gymnastics while never losing sight of the narrative propelling undun: a man’s life on the streets and his inevitable death at its hands. Black Thought is as good a narrator as you could ask for, telling the protagonist Redford’s story with sharp rhymes and perfect economy throughout the album. That said, in my opinion Dice Raw’s verse on “Tip the Scale” is the album’s finest lyrical moment. I tried to choose a couple of lines to illustrate my point but couldn’t decide; every second is a masterpiece. This is the Wire of rap: stark in its depiction of street life, understanding but not condoning of the decisions our hero makes, and an undeniable work of art.

11. Party – Beyoncé (feat. André 3000)

In any other pop star’s hands, this song would be terrible. Ke$ha would turn it into a retarded ode to clubbing and meaningless sex. Rihanna would churn out a discourse on female-empowerment-through-sexual-gratification; Lady Gaga would do the same thing but throw something in there about gay rights or Learning to Love Yourself. Nicki Minaj would add a couple of verses delivered using the same split-personality schtick she’ll milk for all eternity. Katy Perry would just make it totally forgettable, arguably the biggest sin of all. In all of these scenarios, the song would have a plodding 4/4 beat, a throbbing bassline, and possibly a keyboard hook reminiscent of “Snap Yo Fingaz”. Thankfully for us, Beyoncé’s the one who recorded this track, and if I’ve learned anything about music in 2011, it’s that Beyoncé has impeccable taste in music and collaborators. Kanye West’s production is funky, understated, and totally unlike anything he’s done in the past few years, proving once again just how creative and vital an artist he is. In the album’s only guest verse, André 3000 delivers a heartwarming sermon on success and growing up that’s nearly as quotable as “Six Foot Seven Foot” (his contribution is inexplicably replaced in the remix used for the music video with a merely-okay verse from J. Cole). Of course, Beyoncé’s performance is key to the song’s success. Her multi-tracked vocals are simultaneously disorienting (there’s so many overdubbed harmonies it’s difficult to figure out which notes make up the main melody) and incredibly personal, making a song that could be Just Another Song About Sex into something much more tender and interesting.