CREDIT: Music Video Screenshots

According to my 2021 Spotify Wrapped, my top musical moods of the year were “bold” and “ecstatic.” So let’s call these the Best Bold & Ecstatic Songs of 2021.

1. tUnE-yArDs, “Hypnotized”: This whole song is one extended buildup to an ecstatic vocal climax courtesy of Merrill Garbus.
2. Royal Blood, “Oblivion”: The most ecstatic track on the most ecstatic album of the year.
3. Modest Mouse, “We Are Between”: Really ecstatic chorus from Isaac Brock on this one.
4. X Ambassadors, “Adrenaline”: A song called “Adrenaline” better be ecstatic, and this one certainly is.
5. Olivia Rodrigo, “good 4 u”: It’s really bold to display all the attitude present in this song.
6. Royal Blood, “Typhoons”: I can just feel my lips curling into place as the chorus kicks in, that’s how ecstatic this song is.
7. Tori Kelly, “What Happens Next”: I tell you what: I sure feel ecstatic whenever Tori Kelly hits and holds those high notes.
8. Cat Power, “Pa Pa Power”: This is actually rather mellow compared to the rest of the songs on this list, but it’s rather bold of Cat Power to put the word “power” in one of her titles.
9. Royal Blood, “Limbo”: This song’s shredding guitars keep me in a limbo-like stage between ecstasy and almost-ecstasy.
10. Halsey, “I am not a woman, I’m a god”: Rather bold of Halsey to go full industrial.
11. Lil Nas X, “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)”: Boldly asking for what you want.
12. Aly & AJ, “Listen!!!”: There’s plenty of ecstasy to go around when sisters rock out together.
13. Sigrid, “Mirror”: This is a song about feeling ecstatic while looking at your own reflection.
14. twenty one pilots, “The Outside”: It’s bold to make rock ‘n’ roll full of patient tinks and plinks.
15. Doja Cat ft. SZA, “Kiss Me More”: How bold of Ms. Cat to interpolate Olivia Newton-John into 2021; I’m sure it made many listeners ecstatic!
16. Olivia Rodrigo, “Deja Vu”: The sort of song that you can sing along to while spinning around in ecstasy.
17. Willow ft. Travis Barker, “Transparent Soul”: Plenty of the ecstasy inherent to young adulthood present in this song.
18. Charli XCX, “Good Ones”: How bold of Charli to be vulnerable in an ecstatic pop song.
19. Olivia Rodrigo, “Brutal”: Indeed, it’s brutal out there when you have bold songwriting like this.
20. Meg Myers, “The Underground”: The yah-yah’s of this song’s chorus are typical of ecstasy.
21. Cold War Kids, “What You Say”: The Cold War Kids have a baseline of everyday ecstasy.