The most popular songs reflect where a culture is at.

In my analysis of last year’s top 10 songs, I found the songs were usually about either the beginning of a romantic relationship or the end of a romantic relationship. And yeah, some partying went along with it. Is that what society is telling us is most important?

So where are we a year later? Here’s a quick categorization of Billboard’s top 10 songs for 2013:

• Two pretty nasty hypermasculine pickup songs: “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke and “Cruise” by Florida Georgia Line
• Two breakup-related songs: “When I Was Your Man” by Bruno Mars and “Just Give Me A Reason” by Pink
• Two faux self-empowerment anthems: “Roar” by Katy Perry and “Can’t Hold Us” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
• Two songs with heavy to slight social commentary: “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons and “Thrift Shop” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
• One complex and multi-layered love song: “Mirrors” by Justin Timberlake
• One song just here because of a meme craze: “Harlem Shake” by Baauer

Just two of these songs go to a deeper spiritual place than the usual cliches about gender roles, hedonism and what’s considered success in a consumer culture. But let’s go through the top 10 songs one by one:

1. “Thrift Shop,” Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Shopping recession style in suburbia

In a year where rappers Kanye West, Eminem and M.I.A. released possibly their best albums, the number one song of the year is “Thrift Shop,” a rap novelty song.

Too bad. Maybe it would have been a small game changer if something as politically and spiritually explosive like “Black Skinhead” or “Bring The Noize” was the number one song for the year.

But that doesn’t mean there’s not something a little meaningful and spiritual in this rap-pop novelty song. In recession-ravaged America where the new normal is an ongoing recession, some habits have changed — even in white suburbia.

And please don’t send me any e-mails, economics people. I know a recession has a technical definition. It’s two negative quarters of GDP growth. As long as things are growing even a little it’s called a “recovery” not a recession.

But the truth is, the economic hard times are ongoing. Most jobs being created are crap paying jobs. So there ain’t much money going around for most of the 99 percent. So things have gotta change. Including how we shop.

This song is a celebration of sifting through a thrift shop and looking cool in silly clothes that probably came from grandpas and aunties. But there’s some wisdom in it:

“Fifty dollars for a t-shirt, that’s just some ignorant ***
I call that getting swindled and pimped
I call that getting tricked by a business.”

Don’t even bother “trying to get girls from a brand,” Macklemore says. That ain’t gonna work. You’ll just be one of six people in the club wearing the same thing. So this song offers a mini-liberation from the worship of brands often mentioned in too many rap songs.

So sure. I’d like a little more anger at the system that created the perma-recession instead of this celebration. But it’s some indicator of where the culture is at. And maybe it’s a healthy spiritual act to go to a thrift store instead of a mall. Why not celebrate it? Just ditch the fur coats, dude.

Almost half a billion people have watched this music video:

2. “Blurred Lines,” Robin Thicke

Can we just blur this out?

I’ve written about the sexism date-rapism stupidism in this song before. So I’ve spent far too much time already dissecting this song and its music video. But it’s the second most popular song of 2013. So time to haul it out again.

Unless you’ve been in a bunker hiding from the NSA, you know what this song is about. Well, at least the music video. Because the music video is so embedded in pop culture now that it’s impossible to separate it from the song.

It has suave well-dressed white dude Thicke in pimp mode surrounded by his rapper homeboys with three scantily clad women. The dudes have their designer clothes on, the girlies take it off or don’t wear much. The women also do some strange fetishy stuff like hold a lamb, get on top of a stuffed animal, coo at the camera while a toy car slides down her back.

The dudes play air bass, gyrate around, play with the ladies’ hair and Mr. Pimp himself eats an ice cream cone.

The dudes are also confident about wearing down women who resist at first.  Unwilling at first ladies are told “I know you want it.” you’re an animal, baby it’s in your nature, just let me liberate you” and “that’s why I’m goin’ to’ take a good girl.”

All of this earned Thicke the Sexist of the Year award from a coalition of women’s groups. This music video was so ubiquitous that it was probably deserved. Or at least Thicke should be awarded pop culture sexist of the year.

Here’s the music video. I know you don’t want it:

3. “Radioactive,” Imagine Dragons

Waking up to an apocalypse

This is by far the best song in this year’s top 10. There’s actually something going on here other than “does she want/love me? Does she want/love me not?”

“This is it, the apocalypse,” singer Dan Reynolds says. Then there’s an ominous “welcome to the new age” repeated along with “I am radioactive.”

The details of what’s going on here are not specified. But it sounds like there’s been an apocalyptic-like eruption. Is it an environmental disaster? Is it a revolution? Whatever it is, something has changed the world.

“I raise my flags, don my clothes/It’s a revolution, I suppose,” Reynolds sings.

The lack of specific details actually works in the song’s favor. This could be a symbol for so many things: we’re already living in a dystopia, the dystopia is coming, the apocalypse is coming, there’s a revolution coming, the revolution is starting, environmental disaster is coming. Take your pick.

The brilliant music video only adds to the possibilities.

A girl wearing a hoodie walks through a field on the way to a barn. Inside is a ring resembling a cock or dog fight ring. She’s carrying a cage. While people stand around the ring betting, a sinister purple puppet destroys other puppets in the ring. Other survivors are sent through a trap door pulled by what looks like the head gangster (Lou Diamond Phillips). It leads to a prison where the band members of Imagine Dragons are confined.

She takes a pink stuffed animal out of the cage and it enters the ring. He defeats the puppet and with his laser eyes disintegrate two men who come after the puppet. The other men scatter. The girl grabs the key from around the neck of Phillips and unlocks the prison. She pulls the trap door so he descends into the prison. The end shows the stuffed animals attacking Phillips.

The music video shows a world that is rigged, ruthless and cruel — Wall Street anyone? But there is uprising and ultimately justice. It’s a song for our times.

Here’s the must-see music video for “Radioactive”:

4. “Harlem Shake,” Baauer

This shake isn’t stirring

This song is in the Top 10 because Billboard now includes YouTube views in its rankings for the top songs. And for a few months in early 2013 this song inspired a short-lived YouTube viral phenomenon.

It started in February when this video uploaded in Australia kicked off a meme that spread across YouTube. (But maybe the original inspiration was The Peanuts Christmas special?)

The formula is simple. For the first 15 seconds of the clip one person dances around — often wearing a helmet and costume — while the people around him are too preoccupied to acknowledge the lone dancer. For the second 15 seconds the previously passive people around him gyrate wildly, wearing costumes and shaking props. It all ends with a lion’s roar where a slow motion effect.

The formula was repeated and uploaded thousands of times in many variations. But when corporate America stole it, then it no longer looked like a grass roots movement. That killed the craze. The “Harlem Shake” formula was used in a soda commercial — including an obnoxious one where only the products themselves were shown. There seemed no end to it:  Sports teams, the Norwegian army, a national politician. And as The Daily Beast accurately noted — when “The Today Show” does their version of any viral video the trend is immediately over. At least “The Daily Show” was smart enough to do a satire of it.

Why was this such a viral hit? What did it really signify? Does the one lone dancer an inspirational figure who rallies others to loosen their inhibitions? Is it a statement on how our identity is shaped through the pop culture clothes and props that the dancers use? Or is it just one big dumb variation on a frat party?

Detached from the viral videos. it’s a forgettable song. About 30 seconds of it is long enough. Azealia Banks rapped over it which proved that the song would make a good backdrop for a rap. But as it is, it’s nearly impossible to listen it all the way through. Just try.

You’ve seen so many viral versions. Here’s the original music without any visuals:

5. “Can’t Hold Us,” Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Can’t hold us from turning this song into multiple commercials

On the surface this song is about attaining success on one’s own terms.

But it doesn’t have the fighting-my-way-out-of-the-darkness feel of something like Eminem‘s “Lose Yourself.” “Can’t Hold Us”  feels more like a party anthem than anything real or meaningful. You just can’t take it too seriously.

Which is why it was no surprise that Macklemore sold out so quickly. Which leads me to believe this dude is gonna be a one trick pony.

How do he sell out? How shall I count the ways? A beer commercial. An e-mail provider. A cable TV network. I guess that’s all this dude fought for. To be successful enough for his song about fighting the system to be accepted as part of the system.

This is a typical and disturbing narrative in rap that just reflects what the consumer culture wants people to believe: career and material success solves all problems. This is why a superior artist like Eminem has lasted. His masterful latest album “Marshall Mathers LP 2” shows the downside of success and confirms that he still has some of the same human issues — money or not. But for Macklemore it’s just about success and status. Nothing deeper.

That doesn’t mean he can’t toss off some good lines here and there. Like saying the formula requires “being a little bit humble, a little bit cautious.” And he does mention how major record companies just don’t get it: “labels out here, nah, they can’t tell me nothing.”

A few lines don’t make for anything revolutionary though.

Here’s the music video:

6. “Mirrors,” Justin Timberlake

Mirror, mirror let me see my relationship

Most relationship songs fall into two categories.

First category: the beginning of relationship songs. They range from the elation of discovering new love to the lust-filled pickup song.

Second category: the end of relationship songs. These are the pre-breakup, breakup, or post-breakup songs. They’re either about a breakup coming, the trauma of a breakup or I will survive a breakup. There are endless incarnations of these themes in many different genres of music.

Rare is the relationship song that focuses on love between those two points. So you have to  give Justin Timberlake credit for a song that honors the lengthy (and hopefully lifelong) phase after first meeting or marrying someone. This is where most of us live.

“Mirrors” is lukewarm white boy R&B. Not too challenging or special. But the lyrics strive for something more than what usually ends up high on the charts. It’s the lyrics that take this song to a higher level than almost anything else here in the Top 10.

His partner who he calls “the love of his life” is described as a mirror. “You reflect in this heart of mine,” he says. And the singer views the relationship as a journey he wants to take with her: “with your hand in my hand and a pocket full of soul/I can tell you there’s no place we couldn’t go.”

The relationship seems to have undergone some sort of strain. He says “I don’t want to lose you now.” But it doesn’t deviate into the fear of breakup syndrome. He also seems to have grown from whatever trauma happened. And he’s also trying to help her through something: “Just put your hand on the glass, I’m here trying to pull you through, You just gotta be strong.”

There’s a range of emotions in this song — including: viewing a partner as an inspiration, growing from a relationship, wanting to help someone else. There’s definitely something spiritual in this complexity.

The music video is a mixed bag. On the one hand it is a somewhat poignant look at three phases of a couple’s relationship: when they first meet, a problem in young adulthood (a pregnancy it seems) and old age. The downside is that it is too 1980s-concept heavy and somber. Also, there’s an extended sequence at the end with Timberlake in front of mirrors in a fun house with some dancers in the background that goes on way too long.

But this is a grown up love song. A good thing for the pop charts.

Here’s the music video:

7. “Just Give Me A Reason,” Pink

Please don’t breakup with me, please

At first listen this sounds like it could be this year’s variation on Goyte‘s “Somebody That I Used To Know,“ which was 2012’s number one song. But it’s not.

Unlike Goyte’s smash hit, this there doesn’t seem to be an interesting dialogue between partners on their points of view about the relationship. Pink and fun‘s lead singer Nate Reuss seem to be repeating the same ideas rather than presenting different points of view.

This isn’t a breakup song. It’s a desperate plea to keep a relationship alive. “We’re not broken, just bent,” and “nothing is as bad as it seems,” Pink sings.

I guess there’s something spiritually satisfying about wanting to keep a relationship going. We don’t know what happened, we don’t know enough about what caused this crisis. The biggest clue comes from Pink who sings “I let you see the parts of me that weren’t all that pretty/And with every touch you fixed them.” Her partner appears to be someone she opened up to that she doesn’t want to lose. But we really don’t know much else.

But the song is a bore. Pink occasionally comes up with a good hit. But too often she falls into something too often seen in the top 40: I-shriek-therefore-there-must-be-some-emotion. It could also be called American Idol-itis. The singers must be over the top wailing like an overblown opera. There are even worse examples of this, but the song is still a victim of that trend.

Here’s the music video:

8. “When I Was Your Man,” Bruno Mars

Oh man, I screwed up

With just a piano and a voice, this is a stark song about the fallout from a breakup.

The dude is regretful. He knows he screwed up. He messed up on some pretty basic things. He was “too young” and “too dumb” to know he should have bought her flowers, held her hand, and taken her to more parties.

Why did he blow the basics?

“My pride, my ego, my needs, and my selfish ways
Caused a good strong woman like you to walk out my life
Now I never, never get to clean up the mess I made.”

He knows it’s probably too late to get her back. So he wishes her the best with her new love.

The music drones on and is full of the vocal melodrama that’s dominated the charts in recent years because of “American Idol” and “The Voice.”  And it’s not exactly complex in its assessment of the relationship.

But from a spiritual point of view, it has a maturity missing in other breakup songs. He accepts it’s over and even wishes her well. He owns up to his self-centered characteristics. There’s the feeling he’s really going to grow from this experience. It’s an epiphany.

Here’s the music video with piano and a dude with shades alone at a piano:

9. “Cruise,” Florida Georgia Line

Me got big pickup truck, you got bikini

Country music is probably at an all-time low. The charts are currently dominated by hypermasculine dudes talking about picking up country girls in their pickup trucks and going all the way. These country songs are getting as bad as the most blatant of rap songs with the rampant sexism and product placement. Florida Georgia Line‘s song was the most popular song this year that was part of that trend.

In this song the dude sees a girl in a bikini swimming in a river. She gets out of the water and he admires her long tanned legs. The lady likes drinking hard liquor and singing country rock songs. Then she gets assertive and hops into his big pick up truck and says “fire it up, let’s go get this thing stuck.” We don’t really know anything about this woman. She’s fragmented into body parts, sucks down booze and is up for some action. That’s all that counts.

With these country songs rivaling mainstream rap for its sexism, there’s no surprise there’s a remix featuring rapper Nelly. And an accompanying music video that has even mo’ women and mo’ cars.

What’s next? The country version of “Blurred Lines”?

Here’s the music video for the remix of “Cruise” featuring rapper Nelly:

10. “Roar,” Katy Perry

A not so fierce wannabe anthem

This song desperately wants to be an anthem like Perry’s massive 2010 hit “Firework.” But it falls way short.

In the song she starts off that she’s been too quiet and submissive. She’s been “scared to rock the boat and make a mess,” she says, as well as “I stood for nothing, so I fell for everything.”

But along the way she’s overcome it and gained some self-empowerment: “I went from zero, to my own hero,” she declares. The roaring the song mentions represents that she now has a loud voice to express herself instead of being silent and submissive.

So why am I not buying this as a real anthem? It just feels forced. I guess it’s more mediocre than horrible. But it’s unsatisfying.

The silly music video doesn’t help.

Perry’s airplane crashes on a island. She tames the wild animals she encounters. The weirdest tactic? Painting the toenails of an elephant. The skimpy cavegirl outfit is also ironic because it seems from the song that she wants to be taken seriously. And the shots of a camera as she takes selfies of herself with animals is another low in product placement.

The song is so overproduced it sounds like a car commercial. It doesn’t have the passion of “Firework” and isn’t as catchy as “Last Friday Night.” You can do better, Katy.

Here’s the music video: