NPR Music - Our no. 1 songs: 2012

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

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.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton. We're looking back at our number one songs from the past 25 years as part of the show's anniversary, our quarter-century anniversary, doing a different year each week. Stephen Thompson here, as always. It's great to be here, Robin. So, Stephen, when we talked about our favorite songs from 2011, you sort of telegraphed. The 2012 was going to be a tough year for us to narrow down.

So what's the first thing that you think of? Well, maybe not the first thing, but maybe your favorite thing, or what takes you back? 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. 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. But to me, the one that I have gone back to over and over and over again, arguably my favorite song of that year, and certainly one that has best stood the test of time is this one.

A tornado flew around my room before you came. Excuse the message made. It usually doesn't rain. Well, Frank Ocean. Thinking about you? Correct. Yeah.

Don't shed tears before they poor. And I'm thinking about you. Oh, no, no. I've been thinking about you. Hugh, no, no. I've been thinking about you. Do you think about me still? Do you?

Do you? This is timeless and it's a classic and it's one I should listen to more but I honestly I don't think that I have put this on in all the years since. Robin. I know. It's so good to hear it again.

Also, I'm going to do something we don't usually do on this show. I'm going to skip ahead. Yes, of course. I remember how could I forget. How you feel you were my first time. Forget old night and my soul not in my soul.

I mean, Robert. I know you talk about songs that pack up just full of emotion, and they hit you in the heart like that. That song does so much in three minutes and 21 seconds, but what the guitar is doing in that bridge just sends me. I'm not sure, other than occasionally encountering it on the radio, I'm not sure I've ever heard that song only one. consecutively because every time I hear it, I immediately need to hear it again in part so I can relive that bridge.

Well, I'm going to do a completely different mood shift again. Great. I mean, there's so much. This 2012 is such a good year. You know what the first note is that I wrote for 2012 when I was meant, throw a rock. Yeah. I really, I just wrote throw rock. I don't know because it could be any number of things. For our 2016, for our Sweet 16 anniversary show, we picked Tesolate. by Alt-J, which is an incredible song. But I'm going to go with this one. You just picked a song from 2012 by fun that is not We Are Young.

Now I get to do this one instead. Carry on. Well, I woke up to the sound to silence the cars. We're cutting like knives in a fist fight. And I found you with a bottle of wine, your head in the curtains and heart like the 4th of July. You swore and said we are not. We are not shining star. This I know

I never said we are Though I never been through hell like that I've closed enough windows So no you can never look bad If you're lost in a loan Or you're sinking like a stone Carry on Be the sound of your feet upon the ground

Carry on Carry on The curtain pulls back You realize you've been in a stadium, the whole all the time. I will say, I think this is maybe better than we are young. I think you might be right. And we are young is great.

And it is. But this whole album, some nights by fun, though, is just full of this. It is just like, if you want to feel good about everything, put this song on.

Oh my God. But who's to say that I do, Robin? You mentioned Euphoria on more than one occasion with some of your picks. And, well, actually,

you did your divorce, what did you call it? No, that's what I call divorce. Williams 1 and 2. And didn't you have songs from 2012 on that? No, no, that was 2010 and 2011. 2012 is when I really was like, yes, I'm driving a beige minivan.

But I can still hang. So again, the band Fun Carry On is the song. Let's take a quick break here and then we'll run through some of the other stuff that takes us back to 2012. All right, Stephen Thompson. What else from 2012 stands out to you? You know what my favorite album of 2012 was that we haven't even talked about yet is Japan droids. Oh wow, yeah. I had band that just split. Band that just split, but they put out one more

records, very good. But Japan droids in 2012, the song fires highway. That whole record. I remember I was, I drove into work and I ran into Jacob Gans, our dear colleague and Jacob says, God, it's just, and like a little while later and Jacob comes in, he's like, God, it's so funny. I got to tell you guys the story. I was, I was walking to work, and this car kind of pulls up at a light near me, and it's just blazing the Japan droids just like so

loud. And I look over and it's like a minivan. And I was like, Jacob, that was absolutely me. Was this on, was this on, you know, Georgia Avenue or whatever? And he's like, yes, it was. Well, bless your heart, Stephen. You still got it. And the thing is, you know, 2012, that was the year I turned 40. And so to have a record come along, that album is the, soundtrack to you might be turning 40, but you still got a fire inside. You keep telling yourself that. Also, we mentioned Kishi Bashi on an earlier episode. I think I confused him with the Yonzi record that you played.

But Bright White's came out in 2012. This song is still amazing to me. Absolutely. I mean, really just an electrifying discovery that year. That was one where I felt like I could get almost anybody into that song. That felt like a song with 100% approval rating. Now, I'm sure there are people out there. Don't email me.

I actually hate that song. But it was one where it really felt, it felt like not only a discovery that I would get to experience. It's like, wow, I just got to hear this great new artist. But it's like, I am going to look so smart. Yeah. You know what else I thought when I heard this? I thought he's going to eat lunch off of this song for the rest of his life. It's going to be in every movie, every commercial.

It is so good. Also, that same year, 2012, exit music. Do you remember exit music? I do. I remember them being very Robin Hilton coded. Very Robin Hilton coded. And they had that album, Passage that came out. And I think maybe my favorite song was one called The Night. Oh, sure. So this is Alexa Palladino, Devon Church. Also saw them at South by Southwest, and then they came in and did a tiny desk that year.

I think they broke up maybe around 2018, 2019 or so. What else, though? What else you got that takes you back to 2012? Well, I think when we talk about the songs that kind of represent 2012 and directions that music was going, I don't think you can fully talk about the year without at least acknowledging the existence of this. Oh, God. Gang and style. I mean, you're right, though.

I mean, how could you not, how could we not have led with this song? What a juggernaut. What a juggernaut, but also what a harbinger. Yo, for sure, right? This helped throw open the floodgates for K-pop breaking through in the U.S. In ways it hadn't really, you know, certainly hadn't done up to that point. As far as, like, suddenly getting played on pop radio, going fully viral. and like Cy, who performed Gangnam style, you know, was not necessarily like the bleeding edge of like current era K-pop in 2012.

And so, you know, audiences had to adjust to the fact that not all K-pop music sounded exactly like that. But that song was enormously influential, even as everybody kind of processed it as a novelty song. That's the thing. It was kind of ridiculous. And at the same time, once it was in your brain, you couldn't get it out. And so much of the K-pop we've gotten since then is so much more sophisticated and refined. But yeah, what an opening salvo for sure. I'm going to counter-program. You're not going to name an equivalent song?

I don't know that I can. Sounds a little like metric. It's cat power. Oh, of course. Cat power. Cat power. So Cat Power, Sean Martin. This was my number one album of 2012, actually.

Cat Power's son, and this is the title cut from it, my favorite. Just such a big, bold return for Sean Marshall. You know, she hadn't done an album of all original songs, something like six years or so. And she said she called it son. I remember because she saw this as sort of a rebirth for her. She'd been through all kinds of stuff leading up to this album. And what a triumph I thought this record was. Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

You know, she's been around for so long. Sometimes it's easy to kind of disconnect her from a given era. Yeah. You know, even if she's been putting out music on and off for what now, 20, 20 years? Yeah. I mean, at least 25 years, yeah. Yeah. What else you got?

2012. Well, I think it's hard to talk about 2012 without talking about the songs that really dominated the year. You know, it was definitely a year in which if you turned on pop radio, chances are you would hear one of three or four songs. Right. And those songs were on the charts for, you know, God knows how many months. I'm talking about your somebody that I used to know by Gautier, which actually came out in 2011. Right.

Yeah, that was when it blew up. I mean, honestly, I'm having a hard time thinking of anything other than Gengham style now. For like, what was the most ubiquitous everywhere pop song of 2012? Oh, but when we were talking about ubiquitous, the sound of 2012, you got to start here. Oh. I threw a wish in the well. Yes. You and I had furious debates about this song.

Carly Ray. Call me Maybe. Pettys and dimes for a kiss. I wasn't looking for this. But now you're in my way. Your stare was holding. Red the chain. Skin was showing.

I mean, come on. I have never seen you move like this in my life, Stephen. Do I need to call a doctor? Oh, my God. Let me tell you, no, I was not on the Carly Ray Jepson. You were wrong. You were wrong. At the time, and I was totally wrong.

But there's actually an interesting little fun fact about this song for super all songs considered nerds. If anyone is paying really close attention, and that's this. You know, we do the holiday extravaganza every year. The first year we did the holiday extravaganza was 2012. I didn't know that. So we had a party. We had this cabin in the woods that Bob Boylan at the time we met at, and you show up at the end and see. I fell in.

But anyway, at the very beginning of that episode, as I am walking up to the cabin, I've got Call Me Maybe on my headphones, and you can just kind of faintly hear it. And I'm going, You should like this minute me, call me maybe. And that ended up becoming this trope that we had at the beginning of every single one of our holiday shows, whatever the big pop song was that year. Nice. It's what I sing at the beginning as I'm approaching. We'll probably do it again this year when we do our holiday extravaganza. No.

Good call, Stephen. We'll go out on this. I know we can keep going here. But until next week, thanks Stephen. Thank you, Robin. And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered. Thank you.