In May 2010, Lynn Hirschberg of The New York Times wrote an unflattering profile of M.I.A., in part by taking quotes from different parts of the same interview and re-ordering them. Infuriated by the misrepresentation, M.I.A. posted her own recordings of the interview online, proving her point and forcing the Times to issue a correction.

Controversy struck soon after the release of this video, when Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker accused Beyoncé and director Adria Petty of swiping concepts from two of her pieces. The hubbub forced audiences to consider the fraught lines separating tribute from theft alongside some of the most endearing, eye-popping visuals from the megastar to date.

It’s impossible to discuss Future Islands in 2014 without bringing up that clip of that performance on that late-night talk show. You know, the one that introduced Samuel T. Herring’s unhinged dance moves to an unsuspecting audience and likely had your aunt asking you what happened to his cartilage. As potentially divisive mainstream performances by indie lifers go (St. Vincent on “SNL”, for example), Future Islands on Letterman came across as charming rather than crazy.

Conceptually, that elevates “Get Lucky” to the status of monumental triumph for poptimists (and makes Pharrell the Obama to the rockist Tea Party).

All good songs incite small riots, and “Royals” was one of those songs where writers and critics raced to connect the dots. How old is Lorde, really? Is Lorde a racist? A classist? A cultural tourist?

His field of peers, too, looked a lot different: Miguel was the hook singer on Wale’s risible then-hit “Lotus Flower Bomb”

an agit-punk nail-bomb disguised as an electro-rap booty jam (to which one could easily sing, “I/ hear/ ‘Push It’!”) dropped into the middle of unsuspecting hipster house parties.

In a review for The New York Times, the writer Jon Caramanica described the Haim sisters as “impossible to hate,” but I’d say it’s the opposite—they’re as easy to hate as anyone who makes their achievement seem effortless.

Its shout-along, sing-when-we’re-anything attitude is an update of Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” that actually wants to be loved;

Boneheaded jock-rockers Buckcherry recently offered their own take on the song—which almost makes too much sense—but no amount of dick-swinging can come close to matching Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo’s life-affirming, distinctly feminine effervescence, two 48-hour-party-people shouting endlessly and awesomely over a bassline that sounds like a Transformer vomiting rainbows.

he's singing about a specific side effect of being older and wiser than one's subculturally hyper-particular youth: not being such a goddamn Hipster Ariel about things that other people might love too.

Future generations, if they haven’t already, will one day look back on Miley Cyrus with a fundamental inability to understand why this person was such a source of controversy in our time.

Anhedonia is notoriously hard to portray without slipping back into hedonism; one misstep and you’re The Wolf of Wall Street pretending it doesn’t dig the idea of doing blow off a woman’s crack. “Novacane” is just as gonzo-debauched—cocaine for breakfast, bed full of women in Eyes Wide Shut configurations—but only feels bleak.

But for a track that launched a thousand outraged think pieces, “Video Games” is, at its core, a simple, tragic portrait of modern romance at its most procedural and loveless.

Keef was as divisive a rapper as we saw in the era covered by this list and, if you were to divide his fans and detractors into two groups, your first step would have been to filter by age.

But where Wale whimpers, Rocky has always boasted, holding up his self-described outsider status like a giant trophy:

An amateur pops off with a genuine hit—it's nearing 50 million views, aka Bieber numbers—and suddenly everyone has to make sure you know she didn't write her own lyrics, that everyone just liked the beat, it was really the Odd Future cosign, that the writer deserves the credit, that anything can and must be taken from her.

From Reagan to corrupt cops, the bureaucracy takes hit after hit and keeps on coming.

Punk rock isn't expected to celebrate anything other than the outdated Kurt Cobain archetype, co-opted by fashionistas and tastemakers as a perverse enforcer of elitist, 1% ideals. Audiences are seen as a burden, anyone who parrots even his most nebulous principles is invariably applauded. Meanwhile, aspiring for apolitical, communal uplift is viewed with suspicion. Those born into artistic wealth are lauded for both their God-given gift and their means of squandering it in the face of the less fortunate, either by wanton prolificacy, drugs, self-negation or self-harm. If you were merely born with Kurt Cobain's haircut, you can land a modeling contract.

It was by some misfire of either branding or timing that Frank Ocean was lumped in with emotionally deadened blog-bait avant-R&B, because his freebie debut Nostalgia, Ultra had a whole lot of life in it.

Much of this success can be attributed to producer Lex Luger, whose infinity thumps and rolling high hats would prove to provide the blueprint for the street rap that followed (and, more regrettably, the strain EDM known as "Trap.")

A 16-bit tribute to a New York resisting the choke of yuppie gentrifiers, U.N. protesters, and polo-shirted bros,

My teacher-friend presents this to students for units on "visual analysis"; most of them faint.

Making that one-percenter lifestyle look good in Obama’s America should not be this easy.

A signpost for good in the eternal war between basic and bad bitches, the “Gucci Gucci” video is a slow-rolling battle cry bolded with liquid eyeliner and Minnie Mouse ears. It’s also cooler than anything Iggy Azalea has done in her entire life

If Edgar Allen Poe were alive and drinking in the summer of 2010, he very well may have fucked with “Teenage Dream”. That’s right: The man who noted that “all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream” 165 years ago might have found some metaphysical solace in this song sung by a 25-year-old California girl dreaming about a 15-year-old’s dream about what it means to get deliriously rearranged by love.