Pop Quiz: What's The Best Intro Song On An Album?

The TRL Pop Quiz works like this: our editors are posed a music-related question and have only 15 minutes and just 100 words to statistics, pick and explain their answers. This week's question: what's the ideal introductory/opening track on an album?


Ariana Grande’s fourth album Sweetener just dropped, however I’d already call her intro track “Raindrops (An Angel Cried)” one of the most pretty tracks… ever. A brief cover of “An Angel Cried” by The Four Seasons, the song is 38 seconds of acapella bliss highlighting Ariana’s soaring vocals. It sets the tone for Sweetener and even has a personalized connection -- her grandpa’s best friend wrote the song. Plus, with Ariana’s musical theatre roots, it’s fun to imagine the fact that this song is featured in the Broadway musical Jersey Gentlemen might also play a factor in her song choice. – Kristen Maldonado


“Gloria: In Excelsis Deo” from Patti Smith’s iconic album Horses is my main go to album opener. The track reimagines an existing song, “Gloria” by Them, and incorporates poems and previous works Smith’s. In the song, Patti plays with gender, religion and sexuality, setting up the punk tone of the rest of the album. The song has an arc, beginning very slowly just Patti’s voice as well as a piano, sounding a lot like a hymn (the title comes from a Catholic hymn). It gains speed, instruments and energy as it plays, and it’s a wonderful preview for what’s to come. – Leah Williams


"Supermodel" is the hook to SZA's good debut CTRL, both as its stunningly bold first track and the album's thematic focal point. Over three airy minutes, she delivers dangerously careless kiss-offs ("I've been secretly banging your homeboy,") necessitates explanation for being dumped ("Why am I so easy to forget like that?") And dreads the oncoming isolation that greets singledom ("Wish I was comfortable just by myself / however I need you"). Those tension points of insecurity, loneliness and why those feelings can typically lead to bad behavior weave by way of the full album, however are honed brilliantly from the very starting. - Terron Moore


I’ll begin off by saying that “Self”, the initial track on Noname’s album Room 25 has one of the biggest lines I’ve ever heard: “My p*ssy teachin’ ninth grade English language / My p*ssy wrote a thesis on colonialism.” The song introduces her new maturity to her audience following her mixtape, Telefone. On “Self”, Noname raps about how people don’t believe she can rap and that she made this album for herself, not for anybody else. It does a good job of introducing the album as her coming-of-age story, talking about politics, musical success, sexual exploration and personalized growth. – Landyn Pan


In far less than 90 seconds, Tori Kelly prepares you for the next 50 minutes on “Where I Belong,” the first song on Unbreakable Smile. “I’m just a girl with her guitar / attempting to give you my whole heart,” Tori sings to open up her debut studio album, setting the stage for a no-holds-barred, acoustic soundtrack of her experiences with love, loss and fame. It’s clear that immediately after four years of making music, Tori noticed a sweet spot with her sound and was doing things her own way, not to appease her label or anyone else. – Matt Gehring


“Lucky Star” isn’t just a good album opener; for some, it might have been their first moment hearing Madonna. On her self-titled debut, Madge delivered a decade-defining hit from the jump, kick-starting a career that produced numerous more. The qualities that made her an icon are immediately recognizable in “Lucky Star”—her appeals to the dancefloor; the breezy, teasing vocals; her willingness to conflate the sacred with the sacrilegious. This didn’t just set the template for one of the greatest albums of the ‘80s (which it is); it signaled the formation of arguably the most influential pop star in history. – Gus Turner