I got sick of Only Girl really quickly ... I much prefer 'What's My Name' which has much more longevity imo.

36 - NE Rihanna ft. Drake 'What's My Name?' (36) (226 points)

UK #1

 

 

Her best ranked song of 2010 of course, it's What's My Name? with a guest verse from rapper Drake. A completely different type of song to the previous hit Only Girl (In The World) this was far more geared towards the urban radio stations in America. It had the desired effect here as it went on to become a huge selling number one, although it did look like it had peaked behind Matt Cardle's X-Factor winning song. Historically this game has been far more favourable to more recent songs than older ones, so with the third highest song from 2010 only making #36, it probably means that for chart music at least, 2010 was far from being a vintage year.

 

50 - 45 Little Boots 'Remedy'

49 - 30 Girls Aloud 'Sound of the Underground'

48 - 181 Calvin Harris 'I'm Not Alone'

47 - 48 Nelly Furtado 'Maneater'

46 - NE Eminem & Rihanna 'Love The Way You Lie'

45 - 163 Chemical Brothers 'Galvanize'

44 - 31 Beyonce 'Irreplaceable'

43 - 112 Saturdays 'Up'

42 - 124 Timbaland ft. Keri Hilson 'The Way I Are'

41 - 20 Pink 'Just Like A Pill'

40 - 40 Lady GaGa 'Paparazzi'

39 - NE Girls Aloud 'Untouchable'

38 - NE Johnny Cash 'Hurt'

37 - NE Rihanna 'Only Girl (In The World)'

36 - NE Rihanna ft. Drake 'What's My Name?'

 

Was hoping 'What's My Name?' would be a little higher, it's my 2nd favourite Rihanna song now behind 'Umbrella' :(.

Was hoping 'What's My Name?' would be a little higher, it's my 2nd favourite Rihanna song now behind 'Umbrella' :(.

It was almost her 2nd highest song behind Umbrella here, I'd count down a few more but I'm bored of writing now! Will continue in the morning. Surprised she hasn't done a bit better generally really as she had so many entries reach the playoffs.

Untouchable is good but overrated here. It tries to be grand and epic but just ends up falling a bit flat. I'd take Girls Aloud's earlier material (first three albums) over their, as you described, classier later material any day anyway - The Show, Life Got Cold, No Good Advice, Wake Me Up among others are all brilliant pop songs.

 

What's My Name? is great. Only Girl (In The World) is total ear-rape (but slightly better than its lesser sister S&M).

 

Most of this section is a bit 'ehh' for me. Lots of songs I'd class as decent but didn't feature highly in my votes or not at all, so I guess it's a good thing they're in the lower half in terms of the songs in the final.

Edited September 9, 201113 yr by superbossanova

Untouchable is good but overrated here. It tries to be grand and epic but just ends up falling a bit flat. I'd take Girls Aloud's earlier material (first three albums) over their, as you described, classier later material any day anyway - The Show, Life Got Cold, No Good Advice, Wake Me Up among others are all brilliant pop songs.

 

What's My Name? is great. Only Girl (In The World) is total ear-rape (but slightly better than its lesser sister S&M).

 

Most of this section is a bit 'ehh' for me. Lots of songs I'd class as decent but didn't feature highly in my votes or not at all, so I guess it's a good thing they're in the lower half in terms of the songs in the final.

 

I agree about Untouchable being overrated, honestly never got the huge fuss and I'm surprised it's SO popular on here when I always felt like The Loving Kind had far more warmth and charm to it. At least that made the top 200 I guess but I can't help feeling that it's underrated, I wish it was that that had the hype of Untouchable!

 

What's My Name is easily my favourite Rihanna song now, really glad to see it in the top 40 :D

Untouchable is in my top 5 Girls Aloud songs, probably at 5th but I fully agree with you regarding The Loving Kind. For me, that's their best song and is easily one of the greatest pop songs of recent years.

35 - 13 Rihanna 'Disturbia' (44-13-35) (226 points)

UK #3

 

 

Completing a sequence of three songs in a row for Rihanna, all split by only a single point, Disturbia remains her most popular song on here behind Umbrella, but does take a 22 place fall from just outside the top 10. For someone who has been so huge over such a long time now, racking up 30 top 75 entries since her debut in September 2005, an average of one entry every 11(!) weeks, being particularly big over the past year it's perhaps a surprise she hasn't done better this year, maybe people have started to grow bored of her, or maybe that with so much choice of Rihanna songs in here everyone has different favourites? Either way, 5 entries in the final is very impressive even if only one made it into the top half.

34 - 02 Lady Gaga 'Poker Face' (02-34) (227 points)

UK #1

 

 

Well, isn't this a surprise?! With Bleeding Love and Can't Get You Out Of My Head already appearing, a 32 place fall for Lady Gaga's million seller makes half of last years top 6 failing to reach the top 30. You often find songs in this competition taking large falls in their second year as people rate them initially based on the feelings they've developed over the past year, but one year later and songs can fall down in peoples affections. It's certainly happened this year, being comfortably top 2 along with Bad Romance last year could we have an all new top 2 this time around? It may seem likely but in the 2009 round Poker Face finished 2nd with 294 points, a long way short of the 452 Bad Romance picked up. Put it another way, Poke Face was further away from Bad Romance than it was from La Roux's Bullerproof, which finished 37th. We can't be seeing Bad Romance soon can we? Surely not.....

 

 

33 - NE Alicia Keys 'Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart' (33) (229 points)

UK #7

 

 

Forget what I said earlier, there was a third 2010 song still to come, which is this, from Alicia Keys. Although it was only the third single, this song seemed to be the fan favourite from the word go and was screaming to be a single. After the perhaps unexpected success of Empire State of Mind, this was released and spent five months in the top 75 going on to make the singles from her album far more successful than any of her others. With Fallin' taking a huge fall this year failing to get to the play-offs for the first time, it would seem we have a new Alicia Keys song to take over the reigns towards the top.

32 - 53 Take That 'Rule the World' (31-53-32) (230 points)

UK #2

 

 

After taking a fall last year (what did I say about second year falls?) Take That rebound to have an almost symmetrical run. It's quite surprising that it's made it this high, given it only made the final by two points in the play-off round (although it was 13th, the 14th placed song is yet to come). After two smash hits and one huge album to come back with initially it was perhaps a surprise that they somehow came back with another song which was just as big and would end up being even more popular, denied a deserved number one on account of being released on the same week as the monster that was Bleeding Love, it took only a few weeks to ease its way into the top 10 sellers of the year. If Back For Good were the most fondly remembered Take That song from their initial run, this may well end up surpassing it as the nations favourite Take That (in fact boyband) song.

 

31 - 10 Leona Lewis 'Run' (16-10-31) (237 points)

UK #1

 

 

Despite a huge fall for Bleeding Love and fails for her other songs in the individual rounds, Run manages to at least keep some respectability for Leona Lewis, the most successful of the X-Factor winners. It does fall from the top 10 but finishing half way up the table of the final is still a decent finish for it. Originally covered in the Live Lounge, there was huge love for this song and a massive demand for it, and as soon as the deluxe edition of her album was released this became her third number one.

 

30 - 23 TATU 'All The Things She Said' (89-93-54-60-23-30) (237 points)

UK #1

 

 

Continuing a consistent run of fall one year climb the next, Tatu's ever present top 100 All The Things She Said dips 7 places in its second appearance in the final. I am surprised it's only been in the final twice, I'd have thought it was far more loved on here than that, although it has always done well. If it continues its pattern so far it's due a big climb next year so just inside or outside the top 10 would be likely. They pretty much typified how best to market an act really, an unknown Russian duo - how can we make them sell? Lesbians! They're both attractive so it played well with the male fantasy and caused them to get a lot of media exposure too, resulting in a four week stay at the top of the chart. The fact it was a great song probably helped somewhat too.

 

29 - 24 Pink 'Who Knew' (22-111-22-24-29) (240 points)

UK #5

 

 

Becoming Pink's highest placed song once more, even despite a small fall, is Who Knew. Bar one odd slip in 2008 it's a remarkably consistent run as well, spending four of five years in the 20s. Whilst it was far from her highest peaking song on the chart, it did spent half a year inside the top 75, 10 weeks longer than any of her previous hits, although almost half of those were outside the top 40. As a huge contrast to previous release Stupid Girls this had far more appeal to the more adult market and both this and U & Ur Hand helped the album to become a massive seller.

 

28 - NE Eminem 'Lose Yourself' (191-169-X-X-28) (240 points)

UK #1

 

 

A surprisingly high re-entry for two reasons. One that it has managed to get so high despite only two very low top 200 appearances in the last five years, but also because how has a song that's regarded as such a classic and held in high regard by fans and non fans of rap alike never had any success here? It's not like he's massively unpopular, Stan never went lower than 84 in its five years. Whatever the reason this becomes the second highest re-entry this year (oddly enough, the highest is from a similar genre) as the 2002 number one shows a side of Eminem we don't always see, far more serious and not as jokey as a lot of his material is, some of it borders on novelty really.

27 - 35 Girls Aloud 'Biology' (62-130-46-06-35-27) (243 points)

UK #4

 

 

Released in 2005 and becoming more successful than the albums first single Long Hot Summer this was a track which seemed to unite the pop world and was regarded as possibly Girls Aloud's best song. It even became the pop song which it was acceptable for the alternative fan to like (although I've never been able to understand why - it's horrible!) until Call The Shots was released a couple of years later. After falling from an impressive top 10 peak last year it rebounds slightly again this time around, and is their second highest placed song behind the aforementioned Call The Shots.

Wow at Poker Face, I'm not hugely surprised I suppose as it does sound a bit plain now next to Bad Romance sadly (imo). Pleasing to see a huge new entry for what I believe to be the best single Alicia Keys has ever released and very happy too for the decent Rule The World climb, modern day classic :D

26 - NE Lady GaGa & Beyonce 'Telephone' (26) (247 points)

UK #1

 

 

After spending last February and March hanging around between 31 & 50 in the chart this saw one of the most instant video hits ever, the 9 minute epic being released and this already available song took a fortnight to climb to the top and become Lady Gaga's 4th and Beyonce's 5th number one single, it had had such an impact lines like "once you kill a cow, you gotta make a burger" were being quoted everywhere. Before the video was released this had peaked at #30 on the week of the albums release, taking advantage of Beyonce's fanbase and the exposure the song had had with these two stars duetting. It perhaps wouldn't have had the success it did without such a huge budget and elaborate video, but then that's what they're for, and it may have cost a bomb but I'm sure plenty of that was recovered by the huge amount of product placement that the video contained. It certainly had the desired effect on me, as before I listened to it occasionally but then began to adore it. Even as someone who's tastes lean away from pop music I ranked this song as my favourite of 2010 (although now I'd rank it below Not In Love). Generic? Maybe. Insanely catchy? Most definitely. A video that whatever your opinion of did it's job as well as a video could? Indeed.

Perhaps proving 2010 was far from being a vintage year, here is the year breakdown of the remaining 25 songs.

 

2010 - 1

2009 - 2

2008 - 2

2007 - 6

2006 - 0 (highest placed: Who Knew - 29th, 4th in 2006 game)

2005 - 5

2004 - 6

2003 - 1

2002 - 1

2001 - 0 (highest placed: Can't Get You Out Of My Head, 53rd, 1st in 2001 game)

 

So 2004, 2005 and 2007 somewhat classic years then!

 

There are still five acts who have more than one entry left. Bizarrely, despite plenty of acts having more than two entries, none of the five have had an appearance in the final yet. They are

Jay-Z (both as featured artists), Britney Spears, The Killers, Robyn and even though they've suffered so many falls, Sugababes!