The decade the floodgates opened
In the 2010s, music stopped being something you owned and became something you stood in — a river, always running, that you could step into anywhere. Streaming rewired everything: how hits were counted, how albums were built (longer, hook-first, playlist-ready), and who could have one (anyone with a bedroom and a laptop). EDM-pop opened the decade at full volume, hip-hop's melodic turn ran its middle, and by the end a teenager recording in her brother's bedroom had become the biggest story in music.
Deezer's 10s Hits playlist captures the river's breadth in its first ten: Post Malone and Billie Eilish — streaming natives, both — alongside Ed Sheeran's “Shape of You,” for years the most-streamed song on Earth, Drake's “One Dance,” The Chainsmokers' EDM-pop peak, and indie crossovers like Vance Joy's “Riptide” and The Neighbourhood's “Sweater Weather” that rode playlists from cult to colossal. The decade's real headline is right there: the walls between mainstream and underground didn't fall. They were simply never rebuilt.
Top 10
The opening ten of the playlist, at a glance. The full list, playable top to bottom, is just below — loaded fresh from Deezer's “10s Hits” playlist every time this page opens.
- Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) — Post Malone
- Sweater Weather — The Neighbourhood
- Someone You Loved — Lewis Capaldi
- Riptide — Vance Joy
- Closer — The Chainsmokers
- Shape of You — Ed Sheeran
- Señorita — Shawn Mendes
- One Dance — Drake
- Believer — Imagine Dragons
- lovely — Billie Eilish
The full 2010s playlist
The playlist decade
The 2010s replaced the album's front door with a million side entrances. Songs broke from playlists — mood playlists, workout playlists, playlists with millions of quiet followers — and a track could be enormous without radio ever touching it. Artists adapted: albums ballooned to twenty tracks to feed the counters, features multiplied, and the first fifteen seconds of a song became prime real estate, because the skip was always one tap away.
Which is why this page suits the decade so well. The 2010s taught everyone to audition music in short takes and build their own sequence from the survivors. Press Play All for the decade in order — Post Malone to Drake to Billie Eilish — and you'll hear the exact moment the river took over. It never gave the music back, and mostly, nobody asked it to.
Looking for a song from another time?
This playlist is only the front door. On the main site you can search millions of songs by artist, album, track, or genre — and every one of them plays the same free 30-second preview.
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