Chapter 02 — Decades
10sThe stream
Articles from the 10s
10s
pop
Bruno Mars
Eleven names in the credits
"Uptown Funk" came out on 10 November 2014 with six writers and today it has eleven. In February 2015 The Gap Band's publisher filed a claim over "Oops Up Side Your Head" in YouTube's copyright system —there was never a lawsuit— and on 28 April five names were added, with 17 % of the publishing. It happened weeks after the "Blurred Lines" verdict, and the song had been fourteen weeks at number one.
10s
metal
Bring Me the Horizon
Twenty years to get back to the scream
Bring Me the Horizon started in 2006 with a deathcore record and their turn did not happen in 2013: the leap to metalcore was in September 2008 and the synthesisers and clean vocals arrived in October 2010. Jordan Fish, eleven years in the band, was the one who put in the electronics. On 10 July 2026 they re-recorded that first record for its twentieth anniversary, with Oli Sykes back on the guttural scream.
10s
indie
Imagine Dragons
The band the critics scorned, and the singer who fought for the kids who were suffering
The critics use them as an easy target and the stadiums sing them from end to end: "Radioactive" set a record for longevity on the United States charts. What gets told least is what Dan Reynolds, raised a Mormon, did with that fame for LGBTQ kids.
10s
indie
Portugal. The Man
Ten years of silent work, and all at once a song that conquered the world
Before the walking bass of "Feel It Still" there were more than ten years of albums that did not sell and small stages, starting in Wasilla, Alaska. The Grammy came in 2018, and the band went on using the microphone for the causes that mattered to it.
10s
funk
Pharrell Williams
The man who made two whole decades sound the way they did from behind, and then stepped out front
Through the two-thousands he produced, with Chad Hugo and under the name of the Neptunes, a good part of what played on the radio without hardly anyone knowing his face. In 2013 he stepped out front, and with "Happy" he became the star he had spent a decade manufacturing for others.
10s
pop
Ed Sheeran
One man, one guitar and one pedal filling the biggest stadiums in the world
A stadium stage with no band, no dancers and no backing tracks: an acoustic guitar and a loop pedal with which he stacks layers live until it sounds like ten musicians. Underneath the trick are the songs, which he also writes for others.
10s
indie
Twenty One Pilots
Two guys from Ohio who kept a promise in their underwear
Years before winning anything, Tyler Joseph promised that if he was ever handed a Grammy he would collect it in his underwear. In 2017 he walked on stage and kept his word. The duo's name comes from an Arthur Miller play about moral responsibility.
10s
hip hop
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
They reached number one with no label, and they used that number one for something
A song about buying used clothes in second-hand stores went to the very top of the American chart with no major record company behind it. And at the peak of that fame, the Seattle duo chose to spend it on "Same Love", while their state was voting on marriage equality.
10s
pop
Billie Eilish
She made the future of pop in one bedroom, and swept the Grammys at 18
Four major Grammys in a single night, at eighteen, with songs recorded in a bedroom of the family home alongside her brother Finneas. She sang in whispers when pop rewarded shouting, and covered her body so nobody could have an opinion about it.
10s
hip hop
Post Malone
He belongs to no genre, and that is why he belongs to everyone
He started out with the hip hop of "White Iverson", moved on to the pop of "Circles" and in 2024 released a whole country album. The result is an audience that does not normally share a favorite artist: the trap crowd and the country crowd sitting at the same table.
10s
pop
Harry Styles
He beat the boy band curse, and broke the rules of how a man dresses along the way
Almost nobody leaves a boy band and gets a respected solo career. He left One Direction, won the Grammy for album of the year for "Harry's House" and, along the way, appeared on the cover of Vogue in a dress: two ceilings broken in the same decade.
10s
disco dance
Dua Lipa
She put out an album for dancing just as the whole world locked itself in
It came out at the end of March 2020, when the clubs had just closed and parties were banned: a disco revival album meant for dance floors that no longer existed. It looked like a calendar mistake and ended up being the soundtrack of the lockdown.
10s
pop
Justin Bieber
He grew up under the whole world's magnifying glass, and survived
A manager found him among home videos on YouTube and at fifteen he was already one of the most famous people on the planet, without a single day of privacy. He paid that bill in public and afterwards spoke about depression and showed his facial paralysis without hiding.
10s
pop
The Weeknd
He began with no name and no face, and ended up with one of the biggest songs in history
In 2010 a nocturnal, sickly R&B appeared on the internet signed with a pseudonym nobody knew anything about, and it made its way with no photo and no marketing. Behind it was Abel Tesfaye, a young man from Toronto who ended up playing the Super Bowl halftime show.
10s
pop
Miley Cyrus
The Disney girl who came to own herself, and waited almost twenty years for her first Grammy
She started out as Hannah Montana, a character Disney had designed down to the last detail, and breaking out of that cage cost her years of mockery and condemnation. The industry finally crowned her in 2024 with "Flowers", a song about being able to love yourself.
10s
pop
Benson Boone
The kid who made the stage a spectacle again
He walked away from a talent show halfway through and got further on his own: in 2024 "Beautiful Things" was one of the biggest hits of the year. And with him a lost habit came back: really singing and risking your body, with backflips off the top of the piano.
10s
pop
Mon Laferte
She never fit the boxes
She made her generation's most listened-to heartbreak song without radio's help, won five Latin Grammys without repeating the same trick, and climbed twelve metres of scaffolding to paint what nobody draws.
10s
punk
Pierce the Veil
The photo was never the band
Two brothers recorded the founding album, the most shouted-back collaboration was put together by email, the number ones are co-signed by a friend from kindergarten, and the comeback was saved by the drummer of their favourite band.
10s
hard rock
Mötley Crüe
They needed a notary to be believed
In 2014 they signed before a notary that they would never tour again, sold that signature as their great farewell, released the film of the ending — and in 2019 blew the contract up with explosives to announce the comeback.
10s
pop
Adele
The only stack left
When the album was being written off as dead, she sold thirty-one million copies. And four years later she pulled her record from streaming to force people to buy it.
10s
soul
Michael Kiwanuka
The Name in Capitals
Michael Kiwanuka, or why what they tell you to erase is usually the best thing you have. The industry asked him to swap his surname for a more commercial one; the doubt nearly drove him out of music and he binned an entire album. He came back titling the next one with that very surname, enormous and in capitals on the sleeve, and won the Mercury Prize. On the faith that held him up and the name that was never the problem.