DavesMusicDatabase.com is devoted to ranking, rating, and reviewing music of all genres and eras. The DMDB blog serves up album and song reviews, best-of lists, music history snapshots, and music-related essays.
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 | DMDB Songs of the Year:1800-2024 |
These are the best songs for each year from 1800 to present, according to Dave’s Music Database. Rankings are determined by aggregating multiple best-of lists along with chart data, sales figures, radio and video airplay, and streams. Check out other “songs of the year” lists here.
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First posted 3/31/2019; last updated 5/12/2025. |
 | Post MaloneTop 30 Songs |
Rap singer/songwriter and record producer born Austin Richard Post on 7/4/1995 in Syracuse, New York. First artist in history to have eight songs reach diamond-certified status. For a complete list of this act’s DMDB honors, check out the DMDB Music Maker Encyclopedia entry. Click here to see other acts’ best-of lists. Top 30 SongsDave’s Music Database lists are determined by song’s appearances on best-of lists, appearances on compilations and live albums by the featured act, and songs’ chart success, sales, radio airplay, streaming, and awards.
DMDB Top 1%:
1. Rockstar (with 21 Savage, 2017) DMDB Top 2%:
4. Psycho (with Ty Dolla $ign, 2018) DMDB Top 5%:
5. Better Now (2018) DMDB Top 10%:
9. White Iverson (2015) DMDB Top 20%:
11. I Like You (A Happier Song) (with Doja Cat, 2022) Beyond the DMDB Top 20%:
19. Paranoid (2018)
21. 92 Explorer (2018) Resources and Related Links:
First posted 4/25/2023. |
 | Billboard’s Biggest Streaming Hits:2013-present |
Billboard magazine started its streaming chart on January 19, 2013 to track the biggest hits as played on streaming services such as Spotify or YouTube. This list focuses on the biggest hits on that chart based on weeks at #1. All songs to spend three weeks or more on top are included here. Ties are broken by songs’ overall Dave’s Music Database points. See other chart-based lists here and specific Billboard lists here.
20 weeks:
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First posted 9/8/2021; last updated 1/12/2023. |
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| Dave’s Music Database:Top 50 Songs of 2020 |
These are the top 50 songs of 2020 based on their overall performance in Dave’s Music Database, which is determined by combining chart data, sales figures, streaming, video views, and aggregates from year-end lists. Check out “Top Songs and Albums of the Year” lists here.
DMDB Top 1%:
Resources/Related Links:
First posted 12/26/2021; last updated 1/17/2023. |
 | RockstarDaBaby with Roddy Ricch |
Writer(s): Jonathan Kirk, Rodrick Moore Jr., Ross Portaro IV (see lyrics here) Released: April 17, 2020 First Charted: May 2, 2020 Peak: 17 BB, 110 ST, 19 RB, 16 UK, 11 CN, 16 AU (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 5.0 US, 1.8 UK, 9.74 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 933.13 video, 1669.06 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:Jonathan Lyndale Kirk (stage name DaBaby) was born in 1991 in Cleveland, Ohio. The Rapper released several mixtapes between 2014 and 2017 before signing to Interscope Records. He released two albums in 2019 followed by Blame It on Baby in 2020. It was his third platinum release and second chart-topper. The album featured “Rockstar,” his second single from the album and his first #1 in the U.S. It also reached the pinnacle in nine other countries. The single featured Rodrick Wayne Moore Jr. (aka “Roddy Ricch”), a rapper born in 1998 in Compton, California. He also released some mixtapes before his album debut in 2019. However, he had already reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 a few months earlier than “Rockstar” with his own hit, “The Box.” On the original, the two rappers “draw a parallel between their hip-hop gangster lifestyles and those of rock stars.” SF DaBaby also used firearms to stand in for guitars. He also rapped about an incident in which he was with his two-year-old daughter at Walmart and fatally shot a would-be robber. SF In June 2020, DaBaby released the BLM (Black Lives Matter) remix of the song. It substituted an extra verse for the original intro. It concerned the George Floyd protests that started in May 2020 and DaBaby’s personal experience with police abuse. WK Resources:
First posted 4/10/2024; last updated 10/14/2024. |
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| Dave’s Music Database:Top 50 Songs of 2017 |
These are the top 50 songs of the year based on their overall performance in Dave’s Music Database, which is determined by combining chart data, sales figures, streaming, video views, and aggregates from year-end lists. Check out “Top Songs and Albums of the Year” lists here.
DMDB Top 1%:
Resources/Related Links:
First posted 12/26/2021; last updated 1/17/2023. |
 | RockstarPost Malone with 21 Savage |
Writer(s): Austin Post, Shayaa Abraham-Joseph, Louis Bell, Carl Austin Rosen, Jo Vaughn Virginie, Olufunmibi Awoshiley (see lyrics here) Released: September 15, 2017 First Charted: October 7, 2017 Peak: 18 US, 11 DG, 114 ST, 5 RR, 114 RB, 14 UK, 16 CN, 17 AU, 26 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 10.0 US, 1.8 UK, 13.26 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 1546.40 video, 2908.87 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:As the lead single from his second album, “Rockstar” took Post Malone to new heights. “Congratulations,” from his debut album, had gone top 10 on the U.S. pop and R&B charts, but “Rockstar” gave Post Malone his first #1 on those charts as well as countries around the world, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. WK The song was also nominated for a Grammy for Record of the Year and won Song of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards. The song was marketed with an unusual, albeit unofficial YouTube video consisting solely of an audio of the song’s chorus. While some considered it a trick to qualify for downloads, others called it a clever marketing scheme which may have been responsible for its #1 status. Spin magazine said, “the chorus loop may be a weirdly hypnotic, post-Vine marketing gimmick, but it seems like it worked.” WK However, they also named it one of the worst songs of 2017. WK Lyrically, the song is a celebration of the hedonistic lifestyle of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. English singer-songwriter Ian Dury’s 1977 single “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll” first popularized the phrase. SF Post Malone and 21 Savage, with whom he duets on the track, both brag about the amount of sex and drugs which they have incorporated into their rock ‘n’ roll lifestyles. SF Musically, the song grew out of two chance meetings between Post Malone and Tank God, a young producer who was working on a session next door at Quad Studios in New York. Tank God ran into Post Malone again in a sneaker store in Los Angeles and asked if he could play some beats for Post Malone. SF When it was recorded, T-Pain and Joey Badass were first featured on the song before they were replaced by 21 Savage. SF Resources:
Last updated 3/31/2024. |
All the Right Reasons |
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Released: October 4, 2005 Peak: 11 US, 13 UK, 14 CN, 2 AU Sales (in millions): 8.0 US, 0.6 UK, 18.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: mainstream rock |
Tracks:Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
Total Running Time: 41:33 The Players:
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Rating: 3.542 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album:Before Nickelback became the go-to punching bag of 21st century rock, they were one of the most successful rock bands on the planet. They formed in 1995 in Alberta, Canada. Their first two albums, 1996’s Curb and 1998’s The State, only reached #182 and #130 on the Billboard album chart. In 2001, however, the band exploded with the success of #1 single “How You Remind Me” and its parent album, Silver Side Up, got to #2 and sold ten million copies worldwide. The 2003 follow-up, The Long Road, was another hit peaking at #6 and selling five million worldwide. Then 2005’s All the Right Reasons became the commercial highlight of Nickelback’s career, topping the Billboard album chart and selling 18 million copies worldwide. It is one of only a handful of rock albums to generate five or more top-20 hits in the U.S. WK At this point, the disconnect between fans and critics was apparent. AllMusic.com’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine called them “unspeakably awful,” STE a saying they “favor clumsy, plodding riffs, still incessantly rewrite the same chords and melody, still harmonize exactly the same way on every song, [and lead singer Chad] Kroeger still sounds as if he’s singing with a hernia [and] he still writes shockingly stupid lines.” STE The New York Times’ Kelefa Sanneh called the album “another brash but sullen CD with more of the worst rock lyrics ever recorded.” WK On this, their fourth outing, “Nickelback ditches any pretense of being a grunge band and finally acknowledges they’re a straight-up heavy rock band. Not that they’ve left the angst of grunge behind…there’s lots of tortured emotions threaded throughout the 11 songs here. But where their previous albums roiled with anger – their breakthrough ‘How You Remind Me’ was not affectionate, it was snide and cynical – there’s a surprisingly large sentimental streak running throughout All the Right Reasons, and it’s not just limited to heart-on-sleeve power ballads like Far Away and Savin’ Me, the latter being the latest entry in their soundalike sweepstakes.” STE “Kroeger is in a particularly pensive mood here, looking back fondly at his crazy times in high school on Photograph (‘Look at this photograph/ Every time I do it makes me laugh/ How did our eyes get so red?/ And what the hell is on Joey’s head?’), lamenting the murder of Dimebag Darrell on Side of a Bullet (where a Dimebag solo is overdubbed), and, most touching of all, imagining ‘the day when nobody died’ on If Everyone Cared.” STE “Appropriately enough for an album that finds Kroeger’s emotional palette opening up, Nickelback try a few new things here, adding more pianos, keyboards, and acoustic guitars to not just their ballads, but a few of their big, anthemic rockers; they even sound a little bit light and limber on Someone That You’re With, the fastest tune here and a bit of relief after all the heavy guitars.” STE In yet another vein, “despite the attempted sarcasm of Rockstar, he still shows no discernible sense of humor.” STE “All this makes for a more varied Nickelback album, but it doesn’t really change their essence.” STE
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First posted 2/19/2010; last updated 3/3/2024. |
