“A&W” by Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey released "A&W" on Valentine's Day 2023 as the second single from her ninth album, Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, and the title is a double bluff: a root beer brand on the surface, an initialism for "American Whore" underneath. She wrote and produced it with Jack Antonoff, who plays a stack of instruments on it, from 12-string guitar to Mellotron and drums, while Del Rey adds glockenspiel.

It's a psychodrama in two halves, the beat and mood lurching midway into a brief instrumental before a second section fans and critics took to calling "Jimmy", and it digs into slut-shaming, rape culture, sexual assault and women's bodies. Pitchfork, the Guardian and NME each named it the best song of 2023, Rolling Stone made it the newest entry on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and it drew two Grammy nominations, Song of the Year among them.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.