This is the final installment in a five-part series listing my 50 favorite songs of 2011. Hope you’ve enjoyed the list and don’t disagree too vehemently with my top choices. Here’s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and the complete Spotify playlist.

10. No Church in the Wild – Kanye West & Jay-Z (feat. Frank Ocean)

“No Church in the Wild” is the best album-opening song since, well, the last song to open a Kanye album. Like “Dark Fantasy”, Church’s beat does an incredible job of creating an unsettling atmosphere, substituting that song’s staccato piano for a looping guitar riff that ebbs and flows out of consciousness, hinting violence but never quite delivering. Teyana Taylor and Justin Vernon’s vocals, used to let in some light on “Dark Fantasy”, are replaced by a hook from Frank Ocean (appearance 3 of 4) that assures us there is, in fact, no light to be found here. Jay-Z’s opening verse sounds pretty good, until you take a close look at the lyrics and realize that the whole thing’s a reflection on the Euthyphro dilemma, at which point you gasp in awe and bow down before the most shockingly brilliant man in hip-hop (he miraculously pulls a similar trick later on a track called “That’s My Bitch”). Where Jay-Z’s thoughts are on philosophical discourse, Kanye’s busy with much more earthly matters. His verse is a perfect dispatch from the wild he lives in, not one of actual wild animals or urban warfare (as the silly sound clips at the end suggest), but one of hedonism, sex, and drugs. At least, that’s what it sounds like before you realize that his lines about forming a new religion aren’t just throwaways; he’s serious about this John Lennon stuff. Everyone else on the track has his back, too. Jay-Z’s verse is obviously applicable, Frank Ocean’s hook demolishes the Christian great chain of being, and an interlude from The-Dream introduces us to Kanye’s ideas before his verse even begins. This isn’t just a hot track from a couple of A-level rappers; they’ve got a coherent fucking agenda. Did I mention that this is just the first song on the album? Sit back and watch the throne drop, guys.

9. Redford/Possibility/Will to Power/Finality – The Roots

When I listen to “Redford” by Sufjan Stevens, I hear a pleasant but totally inconsequential song. Some muffled piano, some wordless voices, but little of substance. That just goes to show I’m nowhere near as creative as ?uestlove and the rest of the Roots, because they thought enough of “Redford” to name the protagonist of their concept album undun after it and turn the song into a statement as grand and ambitious as anything in music this year. Sufjan’s humble piano piece gives way to a string quartet that finds the hidden melodies in his chords and sends the track soaring into the heavens. The moment proves fleeting, as ?uestlove and avant-garde pianist DD Jackson come in to bring the beauty created by the strings crashing down to earth, nearly taking their respective instruments along with it. When the dust clears and the strings re-enter, the music that once sounded so hopeful is filled with mourning. The piece is a perfect summary of the album’s story of a man who tries to overcome his surroundings and fails, bringing the narrative a new level of emotion and a sense of closure.

8. Under Cover of Darkness – The Strokes

The single biggest disappointment of 2011 for me was that nothing on the Strokes’ comeback album Angles lived up to the standard “Under Cover of Darkness” sets. It has all the hallmarks of a classic Strokes track—the impossibly tight drums, the barre chords, Julian Casablancas’ laid-back vocals—but also experiments with the sound a bit. No (good*) Strokes track has ever had such an off-kilter riff, or falsetto backing vocals, or such a dramatic tempo change to build momentum for the guitar solo. If Julian and company had become bored with the sound they’d so brilliantly created a decade ago, this was the way to do it: take their brutally efficient garage rock template and flesh it out with subtle touches. Instead they spent thirty-five minutes skipping around between genres little success, and “Under Cover of Darkness” stands out as an example of What Could Have Been.

*I was about to say no Strokes song period, but then I remembered that First Impressions of Earth exists. The only good song off that album is “You Only Live Once”, so I stand by my amended statement.

7. By Your Hand – Los Campesinos!

It must really suck to be Garth Campesinos! On “Hello Sadness”, he was singing about getting dumped by his girlfriend; on “By Your Hand”, we get all the details on the dysfunctional relationship they had. The two of them fight, taunt each other, and she gets drunk and vomits on him. And yet, if anything, “By Your Hand” is even sunnier and catchier than “Hello Sadness”! What gives? It’s dangerous attributing motives to bands; it’s all too easy to come upon interviews later that totally contradict what you think. Still, my interpretation goes like this: Garth’s life sucks, but then again, so does everyone else’s. You can either wallow in self-pity, or you can turn up the amplifiers and get everyone to sing along. It may not be as capital-M Meaningful in a sense, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun.

6. Circuital – My Morning Jacket

“Circuital” starts off as barely a whisper of a song. Nothing but a staccato guitar riff and Jim James’ voice. For whatever reason, my first thought is always Animal Collective when I hear it. For all its experimentation, My Morning Jacket is in many ways just a really good bar band, so that can’t last for long, and when the song ramps up, it’s glorious. James has a terrific, raspy singing voice when he really pushes himself the way he does on this song, and it really propels the song forward. Best of all, however, is Carl Broemer’s guitar work. The band has said that when they recorded this album in a sweltering high school gym in the Midwest and Broemel laid down the song’s guitar solo, they all collapsed, nearly delirious from dehydration, and proclaimed it the best of all time. That’s not really true, but it’s a damn fine solo, and Broemel’s work on the whole song is excellent.  His guitar is recorded perfectly, with just the right amount of distortion, and every note hits hard. When “Circuital” nears its end and the guitars and drums fade away to the same elements as the song’s intro, you see the logic in the looping guitar solo. In a way, the fierce guitars have imprinted themselves in your brain.

5. Vomit – Girls

When this song was first released, Christopher Owens promised that on Girls’ second album the band had found its sound. I was positively giddy when I heard this, because “Vomit” can best be described as an indie rock version of The Wall, and if someone actually made a full album of that, it would be my favorite thing of all time. Unfortunately for me, “Vomit” isn’t really indicative of the rest of its album, but on the plus side that makes this song even more remarkable. A lonely electric guitar opens the song, matching Owens’ mood as he searches around town for a girlfriend that hates him. The side of Owens depicted in the song is utterly pathetic, and when the song explodes with dramatic organs and gospel singers in the chorus, the mix of self-hatred and self-pity he feels recalls Roger Waters’ doppelganger from The Wall. David Gilmour’s precise, soaring guitar solos were moments of catharsis for Pink Floyd, but when the guitar solo comes in “Vomit”, it’s a screeching pubescent mess of distortion that build more tension than it releases. Catharsis doesn’t come for Owens; he ends the song begging for love while gospel singers wail and organ keys are pounded. He doesn’t get closure or love, but his search produced something of beauty in this song.

4. Novacane – Frank Ocean

Frank Ocean is the single most exciting musician to come out of 2011, and this is finest piece of work. “Novacane” is a song that’s simultaneously hilarious, sexy, and heartbreaking in a way that few songs could ever be. In it, Ocean narrates his descent into drugs following a hookup with a dental student at Coachella, a story so ridiculous it can’t possibly be true, no matter how much I wish otherwise. Ocean’s wants to stop all feeling, but he can’t help but pepper with small asides that let his personality shine through. Like Los Campesinos!, he can’t deal with the problems in his life by wallowing in self-pity, but by belting out a chorus for everyone to sing along to. That’s a lucky break for us, because “Novacane” is one of the catchiest goddamn songs of the year, with top-notch production from Tricky Stewart, courtesy of his Def Jam record deal. That Def Jam refused to do anything with such a brilliant song is baffling, but thanks to the internet, it couldn’t be kept under wraps for too long.

3. Lotus Flower – Radiohead

The King of Limbs is, by any reasonable standard, a minor Radiohead album. Even Radiohead themselves seemed to play it down, releasing the album on short notice with no fanfare and only including eight tracks. However, since this is Radiohead we’re talking about, that means there’s merely one life-changingly great track on here. “Lotus Flower” has been around for a while; it first showed up on my radar when Thom Yorke played it solo at their Hollywood benefit show earlier this year. I’m not convinced that the full band treatment improved the song to any great degree, but that’s only because it’s such a great song in any form. Paranoid verses anchored by an unsettling bassline give way to a sweeping chorus as grand as anything Yorke has sung. The King of Limbs is an album of experimentation in both instrumentation and song structure, but it’s reassuring that Thom Yorke and crew still know the value of an epic chorus.

2. Belong – Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The first time I listened to this song and heard that distortion kick in, I knew I was in for something special. That little two-second snippet before the full band comes in gives the whole game away. You can hear in the fuzz all the brooding intensity of the nineties heroes like Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan. Sure enough, with a production assist from Smashing Pumpkins producers Alan Moulder and Flood, POBPAH have made the best piece of alt-rock since 1997 with “Belong”. All the guitar heroism and angst of that era has been combined with the sugary sweetness that the Pains specialize in. The result: a brilliant power pop song with a heavier foundation than the genre usually ehxibits. And every second is fantastic.

1. 1+1 – Beyonce

You’ve probably seen this video by now. If not, watch it. It’s a video shot by Jay-Z of Beyoncé rehearsing “1+1” in her dressing room on American Idol, backed only by an electric keyboard and a trio of backup singers. For three and a half minutes the whole room is silent, watching Bey as she pours her heart out, eyes closed, into the corner of the room. I refuse to watch video of the performance that made it on-air, because there’s no way it could possibly be better than this. That’s the beauty of “1+1”: on paper it sounds like a song tailor-made to draw applause live (just listen to that guitar solo!), but Beyoncé sings it like no one’s watching; she might as well be writing in her diary. All the vocal runs and tics that with any other singer would just be a display of technical prowess are used to convey personality and feeling over and above what the lyrics state. This is the sound of being in over your head in silly, unadulterated love, and it’s fantastic. Beyoncé’s vocal track alone would have been enough to reach #1 on this list, but the instrumentation adds another dimension to the song. Guitar arpeggios so precise and well-recorded they sound programmed act as a rhythm track, with cymbal crashes reserved for accents. A string section pops up from time to time, walking right up to the point where they would become overly sappy but never crossing over. Just in case the god-tier vocals didn’t provide enough of a climax, a brilliant guitar solo closes the track, harkening back to David Gilmour’s most expressive performances. As much as I love a good guitar solo, though, it’s a bit superfluous, when Beyoncé’s voice has already proven to be as expressive an instrument as anyone could ask for.