I decided during a review of Eurovision 2009 the other day actually that Probka is probably the worst song ever recorded, with no redeeming features to it whatsoever. Closely followed by Aven Romale.

WOO FOR DRUMMER BOY. SHOULD BE HIGHER, EPIC TUNEAGE.

With broken foot and festivities out of the way, it's time to finish this off.

 

110 / Inna – Hot [Play & Win Club Remix]

 

Every time I look at my top 200, I look at this and think that I've probably put it a little too high up - generic Romanian dance which relies entirely on repeating the chorus. Nothing we didn't already hear in 2004, right? But then I whack on the Play & Win Club Remix, and I remember what makes this track so wonderful - the moody, atmospheric instrumental, the longing verses, those infectious 'la's, and I get lost in the track. Luscious.

 

 

POOR BRAVE NADINE. I like to imagine the other Girls Aloud members (not Cheryl though, she was off too busy being notable to the general public) chinking glasses in a jacuzzi somewhere when the midweeks for Insatiable came through (the glasses contained cava and the jacuzzi was in a public swimming pool though, we have to be realistic), but GOD KNOWS it wasn't deserved. For if there was ever a popstar brought down by how much of a cow she (allegedly) was, it was N'DEEN (although again, GOD KNOWS how anybody could understand her enough to interpret her being a cow. Maybe she just said she was off to Irish Mist for a few weeks and everyone though she called Nicola a cunt?). UNSAIYSHUB'L was truly an 80s-influenced pop masterpiece when everyone first heard it, although personal overplay and its inseparably tragic context in hindsight have taken the sheen off its star, so to speak. Still, let us be thankful. Bar Pixie Lott, it's difficult to imagine anybody who could possibly have been a SHITTER POPSTAR than AHR NUHDZ.

 

 

It's ALL ABOUT the production on this one. The surging floods of electro confection after each 'shh!' make this truly wonderful - and quite ironically, probably one of the slickest, coolest tracks of the year.

 

 

I feel I ought to deal with both of these at once. Both are nearly as fabulous as each other, with Green Light winning in the TRULY RIDICULOUS CONCEPT/metaphor stakes, but Good Times winning overall due to being the more euphoric of the two AND having the most ridiculous line between the two (did 'late night shopping on a Thursday' REALLY just get used as an example of living a higher life?). No, they're not quite the same song (iLoons decrying 'urban $h!te' can SIT DOWN), but given they, for all intents and purposes, fulfill the exact same duties between each other just as effectively as each other, there's not much need to separate them. And when you have an act bringing out two tracks that pretty much encapsulate the euphoria of being slightly off your face in a club perfectly, moaning about similarities between the two just screams of being an ungrateful bitch in honesty.

 

(Oh, and MORE SIRENS IN POP PLEASE.)

 

 

It's a true shame that the Sugababes have become nothing more than a punchline these days, or a vessel for mass dissatisfaction by putting out stuff that's 'NOT VERY SUGABABES (ps bring back keisha + mutya + make it 2005 permanently i <3 push the button http://members.lycos.co.uk/jodylei/Smilies/david.gif)', as frankly I cared far more for Wear My Kiss than I can say I ever did for the majority of Sugababes singles pre-About You Now. The production was killer, the lyrics were so bad they were spectacular, Jade took to her new role with aplomb (and terrible hairstyle) and the video was classic hot mess work. What was there not to love? (Other than absence of Keisha shh)

 

Plus, I heard some fabulous watersports-related lyrical restylings of this, so it also wins points for amusing me for passing minutes back in February.

 

 

There genuinely has not been a bigger club track all year. OK, there has but shut up, this could pass as one of them. If I ever become rich enough to become the sort of don surrounded by black marble coffee tables, henchmen, HIGH CLASS Technologie, bags of the white and rent-a-sluts (purely for the visuals you understand, I wouldn't be using them), the middle eight after the breakdown for this would be my permanent anthem. Well, maybe for twenty minutes. After that I'd change for Money Money Money as the gay in me just wouldn't permit me to not do so.

 

 

After a stellar 2009 dreampop seems to have retreated in the mainstream over the last year, a pop factoid which has brought copious amounts of tears to my eyes. However, my musical marriage made in heaven - vulnerability and emotion backed by swirling synth production and gorgeous melodies - was still in existence last year, even if I did have to go looking for it. Hide Me had me wanting to hug a blanket and weep under the influence of enough amyl nitrate to drown a gay all the way through April.

 

 

I really want to remember to get high to this some day. I can't think of any other way to unlock a track that leaves emotions I can't quite decipher in me - a stuttering, juddering beast of a track that swirls in and out of urgency and shifts mood back and forth between the verses and choruses.

 

101 / Alien Beat Club – Oxygen

 

From this point onwards, judging the top 200 started to get INCREDIBLY difficult. This is the first proper heavyweight up on show - a gorgeously atmospheric pop track at once boasting huge 80s and 90s influences - and very appropriately sounding like the sort of thing that would be heralded as a pop classic and their best track yet if Alphabeat came back with it (although let's not start being racist against Danish mixed-sex pop groups and generalising them). The twinkling piano riff, cascading synths and clattering drums toward the end make this something truly special.

Finally some half decent songs!! :D

Wear My Kiss in front of the two Roll Deep masterpiece's and generally useless UK #1's? Hang your head in shame :( I do hope Backseat and Keep On Walking are still to come, and I'm sure they are :o

Have to admit, I'm quite intrigued by your chart Tyron. :D I reckon we (to some extent) have similar music tastes. Some excellent stuff already - and only halfway through this thing.

 

I also discovered 'Clap Your Hands' by Sia (thanks to some European countries charting the song) and only found out later that you entered the song into BJSC earlier this year.

 

Sia for #1 :cheer: (unless it's already been and I overlooked it out of sheer ignorance -_- ).

Wear My Kiss was absolutely ATROCIOUS. If it weren't for them getting sexeh right naaaah, it would easily have been their career LOWPOINT.

 

Poor Nadine - I'm ashamed to admit it, but I'm actually enjoying 'Insatiable' even if it did blatantly steal the 'Umbrella' backing track.

Wear My Kiss was absolutely ATROCIOUS. If it weren't for them getting sexeh right naaaah, it would easily have been their career LOWPOINT.

 

Poor Nadine - I'm ashamed to admit it, but I'm actually enjoying 'Insatiable' even if it did blatantly steal the 'Umbrella' backing track.

 

You know it's bad when it manages to be worse than even Walk This Way :drama:

 

I wouldn't say it's atrocious though, but there's absolutely nothing to the song. It sounds like a rejected track from somebody who was ridiculed for a crap audition on X Factor's self funded debut album. It's so CHEAP sounding. About A Girl was surprisingly quite good though (despite being generic - but at least it remembered a melody!) and the only decent single Sugababes 96.0 have released.

Walk My Kiss is certainly not worse than Walk This Way!

 

Have to admit, I'm quite intrigued by your chart Tyron. :D I reckon we (to some extent) have similar music tastes. Some excellent stuff already - and only halfway through this thing.

 

I also discovered 'Clap Your Hands' by Sia (thanks to some European countries charting the song) and only found out later that you entered the song into BJSC earlier this year.

 

Sia for #1 :cheer: (unless it's already been and I overlooked it out of sheer ignorance -_- ).

Sia is coming! A LONG way down the line though...

Walk My Kiss is certainly not worse than Walk This Way!

Sia is coming! A LONG way down the line though...

 

Walk My Kiss :D That would have been a great song title!

Walk My Kiss :D That would have been a great song title!

 

Oh! There was me thinking this was some amazing mash up that I'd not heard. :(

FINALLY, into the top 100! Hopefully it won't take me a month to plough through this lot.

 

 

This Australian acoustic duo really managed to get the perfect mix of despondency, delicate vulnerability, but at the same time slight flickering hope in this break-up track which doesn't sound a million miles away from Laura Marling - Ghosts. Julia's trembling, girlish voice is simply divine backed by those swooping, majestic strings, and this track would've probably left me in BUCKETS had I broken up with anybody last year.

 

 

And we go from a tender break-up song to a scuzzy lo-fi garage rock track by a 7 foot tall ex-indie darling frontman who excels in high camp comedy and has more than a passing love for New Romanticism and Janet Jackson. And peacock eye make-up and zebra-print leggings. The album wasn't QUITE as good as I hoped it would be, but John O'Regan is still by far one of my favourite discoveries of the year - and frankly, you can't argue with a music video like that and a song devoted to taking a rain check on whether you can do better or not than your current lover, you fickle bitch.

 

 

Commercial dance music has rarely been so classy, or able to pull off such longing. Not that most of the morons who revel in it particularly realise - I have to say, by far the most :manson: moment of my year thus far came when I was at a club and a group of repugnant 'lads' started all group hugging, jumping up and down and chanting 'DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO', football anthem like, over the instrumental hook, completely destroying all of the subtle charm and heartbreak of the track and rendering it almost equivalent to fucking SHOUT FOR ENGLAND or somesuch :manson: Then I consoled myself and realised these were the sorts of mouth breathers who are likely to play Every Breath You Take or Bleeding Love at their weddings, completely none the wiser as to what the track actually means and making themselves look like complete dullards in front of various relatives with a brain cell or four to rub together. And then I was happier.

 

097 / Willow – Whip My Hair

 

To all the haters (although let it be noted that you aren't exactly keeping Willow off her grind), note this: in Whip My Hair, Willow WITH EASE exhibits more fierceness, confidence and personality than some popstars twice, three times, even four times her age have ever done at any point in their lives. And Rihanna, one of the few who has, has a crown to fear for given Willow's current strike rate.

 

 

Little Boots is almost certainly dead. In musical terms anyway. This is a pop fact which took me a lot of getting used to, but one which I finally embraced after a while, with much help. The Ting Tings attempting to emulate her was one source; the other was this track, which could easily pass for her next lead single (if we ever hear it, that is) - a dark, foreboding, Depeche Mode/Erasure-esque number not a million miles away from Mathematics or Stuck on Repeat. A track which also holds mild affections for me, as it got me my first reference (sort of) on Popjustice! I HAVE ARRIVED.

 

 

Damn, Kelis is one classy, lazy bitch. And an incredibly unlucky one who seems to be only capable of just the one hit per era, tragic considering this, the second single from the ill-fated Flesh Tone project, was one of the house diva highlights of the year, a lulling, blue-balling 5 minute 50 second epic which takes a full 3 minutes and 46 seconds to reach the actual chorus and teases you towards it all the way. Urgent, euphoric, all-consuming bliss.

 

 

Right, got that one out of the way.

 

(For the record, even after about seven months I still haven't decided whether that 'guess that's why they call itwindow pain/pane' line is terrible and the most cringeworthy line Eminem's managed in his whole career, or a moment of sheer wit which elevates the whole thing. I'm still 60/40 towards the former.)

 

 

I don't think any other track this year has managed to distill so perfectly the elements and feeling of a night out in 3 minutes and 30 seconds, even with Roll Deep in the equation. ANTHEMIC.

 

(I never actually did find out if that main riff that goes on throughout was a sample, but it certainly sounds like one. Anybody have any idea?)

 

 

Look, Ke$ha is, by and large, a skanky try-hard bitch who seems to have thus far attempted to forge a career out of copying what Lady Gaga seemed like she was going to be when we first heard Just Dance (and, for the record Jark, there is no way that Ke$ha is by any stretch of the imagination a more complete popstar than Lady Gaga, and that is all I shall say on the matter) and appealing to the 'LOLZ SHE'S DRUNK' and easily pleased market of 14-19 year olds the majority of the time. HOWEVER, I shall cease fire on her for one main reason: bitch knows her way around a good track when she's taken a shower and sobered up. Take Animal for example, the deepest thing we're likely to ever hear come out of Ke$ha, a rousing, tear-stained existentialist anthem which contains more genuine emotion than Ke$ha had revealed at any point prior to its release. I can leak a tear or two if this gets me at a weak point.

 

091 / HURTS – Wonderful Life

 

HURTS know how to boil down the 80s at its best (although given their mission statement likely includes resurrecting 1983, that comes as little surprise) - an era of dark, emotion-soaked synthpop backed by earth-shattering drums and soaring vocals and pure, unrestrained class. Wonderful Life represents the epitome of that mission statement (although not the epitome of HURTS, as we shall see later), and let the record show that a love song about preventing suicide near Bristol has never been so...vogueable.

LOVE Last Ones Standing. I got his album for xmas, still need to give it a listen.

I agree 'Last Ones Standing' is my fave Example single to date. Don't think the "orchestra hit bit" is a sample though.

 

Oh, and I totally get what you're saying about 'Stereo Love'. My dad's been watching darts on TV recently and after each round, they play the Euphoric 'Chase The Sun' by Planet Funk and all the crowd turn it into a "do do do do doo" chant complete with "oi oi oi". It makes me laugh, I'm sure Planet Funk never intended on this happening back in 2001.

 

 

:drama:

 

POOR BRAVE Kate Nash! Although let's be fair, it was a slightly deserved flop in that this has to be by far the laziest comeback EVER - literally, this track SCREAMS ten minute job - I mean, she didn't even bother writing a second verse and instead filled half the track with 'bum ba dum ba dum ba dum', the SLOTH BITCH. FOR all its faults however, it remains a ridiculously infectious throat punch of a track, wearing its 60s rock influences rather shamelessly without ever ceasing to be v Kate Nash. Sure, it isn't Foundations, but what is?

 

A middle eight or something would've been nice though.

 

 

Oh, Love Generation. Rather upsettingly for my status as shamed RedOne stan, I actually came around to this in the end (well, duh), having at first dismissed it as a generic RedOne rehash that showed he was finally losing it and would allow me out of his vice grip. Except that's not quite how it turned out; I was seduced by the bizarre Fedde Le Grand-esque vocal chants in the post-chorus, and inevitably so by the traditional TOWERING RedOne production, and as such ended up falling deeply in love with this despite it being HORRIFIC (lyrically, of course).

 

THANKFULLY, Love Generation continued being hot mess extraordinaire, never getting around to releasing a second single and looking to be on the brink of epitomising no1curr to the degree that splitting up was the only option, before RedOne was invited (READ: begged) to enter a track for Melodifestivalen next year and chose to do so with Love Generation. UNFORCH, some bitch decided she was better than that and dropped out of Love Generation the night before, citing 'irreconcilable artistic differences' (THE COW), leaving the other four to go it alone all the way to Andra Chansen http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/icons/disco.gif

 

088 / Andrea 'THE BEAST' Burke – Start Without You http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/icons/disco.gif

 

 

Guys and gays, we've come to this: the first TRUE EVENT of the countdown so far - the track that UNITED A NATION http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/icons/disco.gif.

 

Back before THE BEAST decided ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH and hired Brian Friedman to help her cut sacrilegious bitches left right and centre and reassert herself as the re-embodiment of CHRIST HERSELF before Cher Lloyd started getting any ideas, she'd been left in a difficult position. All Night Long had done WELL but Radio 1 had decided Andrea just wasn't doing it for them any longer, which wasn't good because Beyonce had stopped taking her calls after Broken Heels and had sent a letter asking for her Dereon Fall 09 range back as she needed something to donate to the soup kitchens in LA. Andrea needed something to get her BACK IN THE GAME, and consulted RedOne for help getting her the HEN NIGHT JAM of summer oh ten. And START WITHOUT YOU WAS BIRTHED http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/icons/disco.gif

 

Not, you understand, that we were onside. In RISK OF CENTURY THUS FAR, the track that was to relaunch Andrea as THE star of Reality and represent an elbow in the tits to QUEEN OF STABLES Leona, was a calypso track that sounded ripped STRAIGHT out of a Kia-Ora advert from the 80s. And this just did NOT DO for the gais. We liked our hot messes with an element of CLASS to them and featuring as little child friendly marketing as POSSIBLE as we were already having trouble enough with the few people left who accused us of attempting to CONVERT the kids to cock.

 

And then the VIDEO ARRIVED. And EVERYBODY PUT DOWN THEIR CUPS in a BIG WAY http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/icons/disco.gif People began to REALISE (with the aid of half-naked men, although in my case with the aid of about an eighth of THC) that actually Start Without You, with its psychotic powers COMMANDING us to jettison our beverages and drip drop way down low, represented a CULTURAL WATERSHED in THE BEAST'S powers. Here she was, able to turn what would've by anybody else been a CAREER DESTROYING moment into a modestly-sized UK #1, decent radio hit, and general SONG OF UNITY for the nation. And ultimately, that's more than you can say MATT FUCKING CARDLE will ever do http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/smilies/evil.gif

 

 

Well if I'm being NITPICKY about it then this is technically an 06 track, but I was ALL OVER IT back in January so it'll count for now. Frankly, given we've been distinctly LACKING in pulsating dramatic electronic instrumentals this year, I'll let it pass.

 

086 / Katie Melua – The Flood

 

 

FUCKING BBC. At the end of oh seven, noted DULL BITCH and Magic FM fodder Katie Melua must have accidentally placed an order for the WRONG KIND OF WHITE for her Eva Cassidy collab video, because by the beginning of oh ten it was apparent to ALL that, with William Orbit onside, her next track was on the verge of being her very own SASHA FIERCE and heralding the UNTHINKABLE: a Katie Melua that DIDN'T send us all into a STANDARD DISAPPOINTING COMA, but one who instead sent us all into GOOD GAY ONES http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/icons/disco.gif And she DID. Bitch was getting all MYSTIC and shit for the first half with half-naked men, before going all ORIENTAL DISCO with the second half and launching out some HOT VOX in the process, like a thirty-something flirting with KABBALAH or BUDDHISM in an attempt to relaunch themselves as WHOLESOME AND FIERCE after an unsavoury time in the Heaven club toilets the night before. And as if the half-naked men weren't enough, girl SUBMITTED IT FOR EUROVISION CONSIDERATION too - bitch was KNOWING her new target audience!

 

Alas, the BBC rebuffed her and instead threw oh ten's hopes to a Pete Waterman vanity project, with predictable results. The by-now third hottest Mel on the block was devastated, hit up her two favourite fags Ben and Jerry for consolation, and churned out a standard suicide-fest of a remainder of an album, thereby missing the opportunity to REVOLUTIONISE homosexuality FOREVER.

STEREO LOVE HUZZAH

 

I do have a PENCHANT for 'Start Without You'. I still don't quite fathom how it got to #01. As you say, anyone else who released it would have KILLED their career and be made a laughing stock. This lady has something of the Jesus about her. The "bread and fish for 2000 people" pop musical moment.

 

Frankly, there's little I can say on this that hasn't already been said before - and the track which represents the Motown equivalent of Hey Ya in terms of widespread appeal and simple radio perfection ought to be a mainstay of everyone's year end countdown. I don't know anybody who doesn't like this song - and, let's be serious here, with a break-up song as joyous as this, how could anybody not like this song?

 

084 / Eric Saade – Manboy

 

 

GAY.

 

I hated this song. I could deal with the verses, but that chorus - that bloody chorus that reimagined Womanizer as a gay anthem off its tits on poppers just tore straight through me every time, and I couldn't deal with it. Until the performance came around, and I was forced to realise that this was something only the Swedes could pull off, and that I ought to embrace it rather than reject it (the Eric-soaked conclusion probably helped on that front as well, thinking about it http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/icons/disco.gif). And honestly, when it comes to comparing this with goat bitch, THIS should've gotten the nod every time.

 

It's just a shame it didn't make it to Eurovision in the end. I recall someone remarking at the time that had this qualified and been drawn next to the UK and the Netherlands in the final it would've somehow managed to be the campest ten minutes in contest history. I have to say, I probably would've spontaneously exploded into glitter and worn a feather boa in honour had it actually occurred.

 

083 / Ellie Goulding – Wish I Stayed

 

SUCH BLASPHEMY. The gorgeous, delicate, brooding Frankmusik-produced acoustic track which I'd been loving and living for since OH EIGHT had been mercilessly torn to shreds and electro reswizzled for the album, care of Starsmith, and I wasn't sure if I could handle it. With time though, I came to realise that the newly synthed up production, a million miles away from the original, still had the same wonderful wistful feel to it - albeit in a far more dramatic and bulkier package. Oddly enough for an Ellie Goulding track, neither the production nor the voice is the star here - both complement each other perfectly.

 

 

CLUB CLASSIC. No, seriously. You're probably legally dead if you can somehow resist that verse breakdown just 16 seconds in. I did for a while think this was his best single, but there's more to come later...

 

081 / Kanye West; Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, Bon Iver – Monster

 

 

FIERCE AS. When I play anything else on my speakers at standard volume, nothing happens. When I play this, stuff starts vibrating. At STANDARD VOLUME. I think that says it all about how badass this track is, and that's before we've even gotten onto the lyrics themselves. And, dear lord, I did not plan on ending 2010 having heard the first ever track to incorporate 'sarcophagus' and 'oesophagus' as a rhyming couplet, not to mention a reference to vagina mixed in with them. And that isn't the end of it. If ever there was a track which announced the presence of a star, this was it. Nicki Minaj basically proved herself as an ultimate QoL, regardless of how disappointing the album was, in the space of a verse, which needs reprinting just to do it justice.

 

Pull up in the monster, automobile gangster

With a bad bitch that came from Sri Lanka

Yeah I’m in that Tonka, colour of Willy Wonka

You could be the King but watch the Queen conquer

OK first things first I’ll eat your brains

Then I’mma start rocking gold teeth and fangs

Casue that’s what a motherfucking monster do

Hairdresser from Milan, that's the monster do

Monster Giuseppe heel, that’s the monster shoe

Young Money is the roster and the monster crew

And I’m all up all up all up in the bank with the funny face

And if I’m fake I ain't notice, 'cause my money ain't!

So let me get this straight, wait I’m the rookie?

But my features and my shows ten times your pay?

50k for a verse, no album out!

Yeah my money’s so tall that my Barbie’s gotta climb it

Hotter than a Middle Eastern climate

Find it 20 mataran dutty wine it

While it, Nicki on a pit while I sign it

How these niggas so one-track minded

But really really, I don’t give a F-U-C-K

Forget Barbie, fuck Nicki, she’s fake

She’s on a diet but my pockets eating cheesecake

And I’ll say boy the Chucky is Child’s play

Just killed another career, it’s a mild day

Besides ‘Ye, they can’t stand besides me

I think me and you, it's a Minaj Friday

Pink wig thick ass give em whip lash

I think big get cash make em blink fast

Now look at what you just saw I think this is what you live for

Aaahhhh, I’m a motherfucking monster!

 

Simply, you can't NOT listen to that verse on repeat. Nicki goes almost other-worldly on it, as if she's channeling the sum of every demonic being in existence just to prove her status as Queen Bitch. And it works - I doubt I've ever heard or will ever hear a better or more satisfying rap verse in my lifetime that will just leave me agog, such is its power.

 

Oh, and the video's rather spectacular too. Who can say no to a video that opens with supermodels hanging from chains?

 

 

NO, it's not the track of the year. But nor is it an undeserving winner. She may have worn her Kate Nash influences on her sleeve for all to see, but in Satellite Lena produced by far the jauntiest track of this year's song contest, full of all sorts of little touches that go unnoticed but make the whole thing simply superb (those soul singers taking backing vocals on the chorus being the most prominent of the little touches). And ultimately, there's a lot to be said for this track, which single-handedly proved that an earnestly-sung track with a memorable melody can still win Eurovision without any bells and whistles to its name, which in itself is a rather heartening fact - there's hope for the UK yet!

 

079 / Rihanna – Complicated

 

Back in 2005, when Rihanna first dropped Pon De Replay, who'd have thought five years later she'd be one of the biggest stars on the planet and able to base an album around a crown jewel of a track which took early-00s Belgian trance as its key reference point? Moreover, who'd have thought her star power such that such a move would still be seen as forward-thinking and boundary-pushing in pop terms, yet still feel entirely natural in terms of her development? Certainly not most of us, I'd have thought. Yet the once generic dancehall knock-off artiste threw out one of her best works to date in Complicated, a soaring, vulnerable trance-influenced track which really hits its stride in the gorgeously wholesome middle eight where the vocal layers all separate into immensely satisfying harmony in a moment nothing short of spectacular.

 

 

Chunky synth verses ahoy! Your Love's A Drug has pretty much obvious and instant appeal: an immediately joy-saturated, summery slice of pop that takes just one listen to win over the listener. I'm ever so slightly perplexed as to why this wasn't the soundtrack to summer 2010 - if Taylor Momsen could launch well off of Gossip Girl, what stopped Leighton?

 

077 / Japayork – Teenagers

 

Really, there was no way I wasn't going to love this. A vocalist who isn't a million miles away from Jake Shears in his lower register doing something that could easily pass for a new Pet Shop Boys single? SIGN ME UP. In addition to that, he actually managed what most artists don't. Whenever most artists try to re-emulate and sing about teenage years, they often fail miserably - sounding passé, or far too laboured to actually capture the effortless joy they're after. Japayork sings naturally, letting the pulsing, rousing urgency of the instrumental do most of the work for him, and managed to convey the careless salad days feel he's going for without ever sounding inauthentic in doing so.

 

076 / Ke$ha – Your Love Is My Drug

 

Look, I know I HATE HARD on this bitch but I just couldn't bring myself to this time, for three reasons: one, bitch took a shower before the video for once; two, she actually did a different song to the standard 'LOLZ I'M DRUNK' fare she normally peddles; and three, the song she threw out had more joie d'vivre than bitch ever managed at any other point in her career. I defy you to listen to that chorus and not get a little bit carried away along with it.

Loving the love for Complicated :wub:

 

NO, it's not the track of the year. But nor is it an undeserving winner. She may have worn her Kate Nash influences on her sleeve for all to see, but in Satellite Lena produced by far the jauntiest track of this year's song contest, full of all sorts of little touches that go unnoticed but make the whole thing simply superb (those soul singers taking backing vocals on the chorus being the most prominent of the little touches). And ultimately, there's a lot to be said for this track, which single-handedly proved that an earnestly-sung track with a memorable melody can still win Eurovision without any bells and whistles to its name, which in itself is a rather heartening fact - there's hope for the UK yet!

 

I think you're mistaken there -_- With highlights of the year being ridiculously low, the top 10 had better live up to the ridiculously high expectations I now have! This is surely the first EOY chart not to have F*ck You top 50 :o

 

Single release version featuring leslie-tastic video, of course http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/images/smilies/gggggg.gif Alas, this wasn't the world-destroying pop moment I and many others thought it was going to be on the basis of the acoustic version, but what launched Part III still went down as the third classic Robyn moment of the year, even if it was the weakest of the Body Talk triumvirate of singles - an ornate, string-supported affair drenched in foreboding synths.

BEST BIT: The explosion of synths and strings that comes with the launch of the chorus.

 

 

Oh, I tell a dirty lie. Indestructible was the fourth classic Robyn moment of the year, the first of them coming with her launching the career of noted sour-faced cow and dirty secret La Roux wannabe I Blame Coco on the urgent, pounding and dark Lord of the Flies-influenced Caesar. (Post-modern wannabe hipster that I am, I have actually placed an order for a customised 'who holds the shell will be Caesar' T-shirt. What of it?) One part scuzzy shoegazing Yeah Yeah Yeahs rock, one part crystalline Scandi-electro, and one part, uh, Sting, this was destined to be amazing.

BEST BIT: BRIDGE. Then soaring Robyn vocal heralding the King.

 

 

Moon Theory stands a fair distance away from what Australian disco-revivalists Miami Horror seemed to launch with their mission statement - less 80s pastiche, far more sleek and ethereal, conjuring up Hercules and Love Affair comparisons and with vocals that sounded like Antony Hegarty through the prism of Sam Sparro, and a lush patchwork of an instrumental that sounds destined to soundtrack night drives across lonely desert motorways.

 

 

If there was one word to describe Kelis's transformation into a house diva in 2010, it was classy. And for a thumping, Guetta-produced work like Acapella, classy was the last thing you'd have expected, especially with that calibre. However, backed by lyrics such as the divine 'like a boat out to sea, the silence was too deafening', an insistent beat, soaring and building harmonies throughout the chorus, classy was more than fulfilled - and let it be said that nobody else could've had the audacity to set the club track of the year as a dedication to their newborn child.

 

071 / Ellie Goulding – I'll Hold My Breath

 

Yes, I am FULLY AWARE that it rips off Last Christmas's production and chord progression something terrible in the chorus, yet there's something very lush and sensuous about I'll Hold My Breath which I'll just assume managed to elude everyone else given the SHEER LACK OF APPRECIATION this track got in reviews of the album - the production flourishes on the chorus and the fidelity of Ellie's delivery get me every time.

 

070 / Molly Sandén – Mitt Liv Är Mitt

 

Admit it, the one thing you'd been missing from your life prior to 2010 was a Scandinavian note-for-note rip-off of Since U Been Gone as delivered by Eric Saade's ex (ahem) girlfriend. I have NO IDEA what she's singing about, but that chorus is appropriately world-destroying enough for me to ignore that and just karaoke and mangle the Swedish language in the process.

BEST BIT: The empowering wails in the outro (coincidentally the only bit where I'm 100% certain what I'm singing is lyrically correct.)

 

 

YES I AM AWARE I HAVE U-TURNED MASSIVELY ON THIS. Having dismissed this as a track which epitomised irony via 'never actually taking off, despite the title' around the time it won the Popjustice £20 Music Prize, I proceeded to give the track a second chance - and realised I'd been missing the point of it the whole time. It wasn't the standard dance track as Won't Go Quietly was which was intended to build up to a massive chorus, but rather one which worked based on its wistful nature. I realised the whole thing was built around the instrumental harmonisation in the bridge (if you can call it that, given it doesn't really have a proper chorus); the bit that seems to operate on being a 20-second long Kylie moment, at once joyous yet emotional for no obvious reason - all in all, quite perfect for the track's theme. I'M SORRY I EVER DOUBTED YOU EXAMPLE.

 

 

And we come to the second in the world-destroying triumvirate of Robyn singles last year, one not too dissimilar to Kickstarts - a coy, shade-of-grey track filled with uncertainty and vulnerability. A lot of the beauty of this track comes from its fantastically understated nature - its acknowledgement of all the possible consequences of the relationship that lies ahead, the almost reluctant acknowledgement that there will be time for 'what's on your mind' too, and the achingly human realisation of the many ways the relationship could go wrong which plays directly to the strengths of Robyn's emotive voice, which works as an instrument almost on a higher level than any of the others in this track. The whole track itself works as a metaphor for the nature of the relationship Robyn details as well: one filled with potential pitfalls, but immediately redeemed by its high points: in this case, a blissful, swirling, all-consuming chorus. Spectacular.

 

 

Miley Cyrus must be PISSED. She slaves away for ages on albums and goes on Britain's Got Talent to peddle her wares to get into the UK top ten and fails miserably, only for Selena to get Rock Mafia onboard to rehash their remix of her finest work to date, See You Again, and release it and soar into the top ten with ease. But then, it's deserved: a track like this which works a cut above most of what Miley's done since then redeems its slightly unoriginal nature by doing what Rock Mafia do best: providing the cheap hit of that surging power chorus which work perfectly with Selena's sugary yet mature vocals, which works just as well in the lower register on the middle eight as it does on the chorus.

 

 

This track is a lyrical powerhouse of the sort the UK hasn't seen, ever, and one of sheer audacity to boot: an unholy, forward-thinking marriage of grime and electro heralding the 2010 revolution (although one wasted on the vast majority of users on this site, who are too busy being apoplectic that a black man's blocked their favourite pop princess from #1). The creative instrumental backing isn't what makes this track great though: the audacity of the lyrics is, filled with the sort of verbally dextrous boasts and obscure pop culture references no artist from any other background would be able to get away with - not to mention the odd baffling yet spectacular couplet ('I've been to Southampton but I've never been to Scunthorpe', or failing that, 'I've got so many clothes I keep some in my aunt's house'. WONDERFUL.). As if that all wasn't enough, the whole thing concludes with an insane drum 'n' bass breakdown that you just can't refuse to dance to - if you've ever been to a club and been able to resist this, there's no helping you at all.