The Weeknd :wub:

 

You're forgiven for the ON THE FLOOR monstrous inclusion.

The Weeknd :wub:

 

You're forgiven for the ON THE FLOOR monstrous inclusion.

 

He'd have more if I had any clue what would count as 'singles' from House of Balloons.

 

You're going to get all of the top twenty today - WITH waffle! First five up next.

20 // Amanda Mair //

 

"I wanna become what people become / But I know I'll stay here."

 

Amanda Mair's debut begins with the softest stir of a synth, a single note that reverberates beneath the rolling kickdrum beat that repeats, emotionlessly, under the stretch of the entire song. Doubt is a delicate, ghostly question of a song, ringing with the fear and nervousness of its sixteen-year-old writer and performer as she tries to launch herself into adulthood and success. The production astounds - gorgeous piano lines, echoing drum beats, gentle touches of swooping synths - but it's Mair's smooth, lamenting vocals and her searching, honest lyrics that make this so memorable.

 

19 // Foster the People //

 

"You say your hair's on fire / Must have lost your wits, yeah"

 

You know this one. Pumped Up Kicks never really translated over to the UK as the hipster anthem it was in the US (despite what could be read as decidedly anti-hipster lyrics), but the riffled groove of it is perhaps too flagrantly American. The bubbling background of the lacksadaiscal chorus unsettles just as much as the hollow, distorted vocal effect on the verses, so that by the time you get to the mimicking whistle of the middle-8, it's as perturbing as it is enjoyable. Ultimately, though, the success of this was a plain victory for a rather good tune.

 

18 // Neon Indian //

 

"But you fail to remember"

 

I do. I fail to remember the lyrics. But the shimmering magic of Polish Girl isn't about the words, it's about the distorted, spacial wonder of the sounds, less '80s than wildly futuristic, swirling and diverting all over the top of the echoing, detached vocals. It's as if receiving a message from space, only space isn't a distance but a maze of sounds. Propulsive, glittery, incomprehensible, Polish Girl makes about as much sense as the Polish sequences in David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE.. That is, absolutely none.

 

17 // Ola // ALL OVER THE WORLD

 

"You don't know me yet / But I don't care"

 

The most stomping piece of scandipop likely ever made by anyone, All Over The World whacks you over the head with the most aggressive violin crashes and it hasn't even started yet. The ferocity of the verses seems to be a challenge to the chorus, which it's all down to Ola to deliver because, if you listen closely, there really isn't much difference in the instrumentation after the dramatic pause that acts as a bridge. Luckily, the most vocally adaptable of those Scandiboys punches a glorious chorus with carefree abandon, wailing and piercing the vocals with pleading emotion to whoever the song is about. (Me.)

 

16 // Katy B //

 

"And I know that we make our mistakes / But you're holding every breath I take"

 

Diving down a bouncing round of synths, it immediately feels as if Broken Record has reached its depths, but just thirty seconds later the pace quickens, the clatter darkens, and the vocals heighten. It seems to be a song written in a split moment, between love given and not yet received, the frozen panic of raw emotion. Katy's vocals pitch as she strains for levels her voice can't reach, but the real kicker is the repetition at the song's climax - a pained recognition of her own desperation for an answer to a question we can't really be sure she's even really asked.

Broken Record doing the rounds as the best single off the album really does baffle me. It's by far the least interesting of a great bunch, and I'd have thought Witches' Brew would be the big critics' choice single. OH WELL.

I think when all's said and done, none of the singles are really much to write home about, I'd pick Broken Record as my favourite though. Go Away is the album's ultimate high :wub:

I love Broken Record, obviously, but there are a couple of album tracks I love even more. But we'll get to that later (hint hint).

He'd have more if I had any clue what would count as 'singles' from House of Balloons.

 

You're going to get all of the top twenty today - WITH waffle! First five up next.

Wicked Games and The Knowing were 'singles' afaik.

 

I still don't get why people only chart SINGLES?! It's like asking for record labels' permission to like a song.

Wicked Games and The Knowing were 'singles' afaik.

 

I still don't get why people only chart SINGLES?! It's like asking for record labels' permission to like a song.

 

I do it now just because I always have - but I also think it makes for a wider variety on the list rather than being packed with the same few artists. (And I can't be doing with 'one song per artist' either. JUST ACCEPT MY RULES DAMN IT)

 

Oh, and in that case, sincere apologies to Wicked Games. But we'll get to that later too...

 

---

 

15 // Bombay Bicycle Club //

 

"Now it gets ethereal / Feet ain't on the floor"

 

Shuffle bursts straight into its discordant piano rhythm, a mash of notes that contradicts itself as it repeats perfectly across the track. The track lives up to its name in the melee of sounds it clashes together, but it also runs against it, particularly in the smooth vocal that crows over the instrumentation, creating a glorious chorus and a elongated, ghostly middle-8. This is a song about finding comfort in the unfamiliar, grooving to the feeling in the oddball rhythm; so that clash of noises, as it peaks, finally thrills.

 

14 // Ellie Goulding //

 

"And so I tell myself that I'll be strong / And dreaming when they're gone"

 

Rejigged for the re-release, and thrown out as a single onto an audience who weren't paying attention, it almost feels fradulent including Lights on a 2011 list, because by now you feel as if we should be in the next passage of Ellie's career. But Lights is a magical paean to the comforts of the past, and it seems right as a suggestion that her move forward won't forget from whence she came. Lyrically, it's the manifestation of her album covers - the frozen twinkling of lights, glowing around a figure in motion, the home "calling, calling, calling" merely the one in her head.

 

13 // Beth Ditto //

 

"I wrote the book on it / Don't test me"

 

Usually heard screaming with her band The Gossip, Beth Ditto's EP saw her head further down the disco direction hinting at by the band's last album Music for Men and go all out with some soulful dance epics. I Wrote the Book is punctuated by some twisting, wounded synths, which gradually take over the background soundscape, but it's Ditto's softened vocals that bring alive the lyrical story of a woman whose past romantic woes have put her guard defiantly up.

 

12 // Florence + The Machine //

 

"Every demon wants his pound of flesh"

 

Mournful organ notes slowly get higher. Tambourines jingle their way in. A woman starts bellowing like someone's pedalling on her right lung. Yes, the return proper of one Florence Welch was unrecognisably her, a whirligig concuction of chanting, wailing and medieval percussion. Sometimes the thing she seems to need shaking it out of is the ghostly hole the production has stuck her in, but, for this song at least, that dilemma speaks of the trap Florence is enconsed in with the devil, her hopeless wailing trapping her in the tribal dance of cymbals, drums, bells and so on. "It's always darkest before the dawn," she cries, and perhaps that shimmer at the end is indeed the sun rising.

 

11 // Labrinth feat. Tinie Tempah //

 

"Yo Labrinth / This one's feeling like a straight ten on the Richter scale"

 

Boasting the best production of any track released this year, you can't really disagree with Labrinth's early assertation that "this is something they call a groundbreaker". Rather than sounding like the future, Earthquake sounds like the peak of now - the apex of what all other pretenders attempt to create, but only Labrinth has made more than mere "illusion". The grinding, smashing, whirring clatter is still fiercely melodic, the chorus a vibrant stomp, Labrinth's louche vocal delivery pulling off wild Simon Cowell references. And so, it gets away with being all about being a groundbreaking tune because it feels like the earthquake we'll all be seeing the aftershock from come 2012.

http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/2324/dirtydancer.png

 

// 10

// Oh My! feat. Scrufizzer

// DIRTY DANCER

 

"I got a new pair of shoes / They'll be ruined in the morning"

 

Dirty Dancer kicks down the door to a new pop generation by turning up the volume on a rolling drum beat. The verses, delivered with scornful, lazy sing-talk style, are a derisory kiss-off to an unseen charmer, cutting him down to size with short, sharp lyrics before rising into the chanting chorus where they demand he show them his best moves. References to Patrick Swayze aren't only inevitable, they're necessary - Example's new protegees spin a new thread from old pop styles, in this case coming fully loaded with aggressive synth-lines and exclamatory synth lines. They're critical, but not cynical - the end game here is nothing more than a good night out. And if the world's going to end next year, what more do you need than a fantastic accompaniment to your weekly crack at performing the robot?

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/1646/mirrorwriting.png

 

// 09

// Jamie Woon

//

 

"The line under what's been / The line for what'll never be"

 

The lightness of the beat that runs throughout Shoulda should not be underestimated for the eerie feeling it adds to this desolate soundscape. The heavier beats seem to echo it, plodding deafeatedly through the chorus as Woon's softly tragic vocals reach their lowest, and deepest, point. The devastating simplicity of the song's central conceit - "I walked when I shoulda run / And I ran when I shoulda walked" - physicalises a doomed mentality, but as much as I've enjoyed wallowing in this song as I walked home in the summer darkness, what you picture instead is someone slumped in abject despair. Finally, the synths shimmer into a spinning horror, and a heartbreaking, lingering end.

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/4284/212y.png

 

// 08

// Azealia Banks feat. Lazy Jay

//

 

"Imma ruin you, c**t"

 

Slick, sly and steadfast, Azealia Banks announces her arrival with an opening rap so quick you barely notice as it escalates into the foul-mouthed break into the main verse. The stunning propulsion of the song itself is such that it's almost halfway through before it feels like it's even begun. Then it stutters to an impasse with a echoing passage that rings as a soft denouncement, before it changes again, that vocal distortion crying as an angry, anguished disappointment. And then she's quickfire again, louche and dismissive and the swearing barely seems consequential because she unleashes it with such careless disregard. And I've not even mentioned the rhythmic bass of the production, punctuating the rap with sharp, hollow beats, pulling the disparate sections together into the disinterested statement of intent. Azealia's here, and ready for the end.

http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/6185/thelook.png

 

// 07

// Metronomy

//

 

"This town's the oldest friend of mine"

 

The accordion stirs, and you're hooked. Helpfully, that fits the track's lyrical meaning - the memory of a flourishing attraction, embedded in the kind of airy, sunlit beachside town suggested by the cover of the song's parent album. The doubled lyrics give the song the same kind of shaking rhythm as the accordion's looping beat. When the heavier synths strike up, we've reached a darker point, an even stronger hint that the couple are in deep, alone, and perhaps adrift. Beautiful, but quaking with cautious darkness, The Look is a poignant, stirring pop song that drifts off again into echoing space.

Edited December 23, 201113 yr by råndomfurlöng

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/4284/212y.png

 

// 08

// Azealia Banks feat. Lazy Jay

//

 

"Imma ruin you, c**t"

 

Slick, sly and steadfast, Azealia Banks announces her arrival with an opening rap so quick you barely notice as it escalates into the foul-mouthed break into the main verse. The stunning propulsion of the song itself is such that it's almost halfway through before it feels like it's even begun. Then it stutters to an impasse with a echoing passage that rings as a soft denouncement, before it changes again, that vocal distortion crying as an angry, anguished disappointment. And then she's quickfire again, louche and dismissive and the swearing barely seems consequential because she unleashes it with such careless disregard. And I've not even mentioned the rhythmic bass of the production, punctuating the rap with sharp, hollow beats, pulling the disparate sections together into the disinterested statement of intent. Azealia's here, and ready for the end.

Amazing :wub:

 

If she's not huge in 2012...

Azealia and Oh My! This is getting amazing. :wub:

 

Labrinth is fairly AWESOME too, good to see that getting close to your top 10. And Beth Ditto's been growing on me recently. Should have listened to it sooner.

Amazing :wub:

 

If she's not huge in 2012...

 

She only needs to add a 0... :kink:

 

Azealia and Oh My! This is getting amazing. :wub:

 

Labrinth is fairly AWESOME too, good to see that getting close to your top 10. And Beth Ditto's been growing on me recently. Should have listened to it sooner.

 

Thanks Iz! :D Labrinth almost jumped ahead while I was writing him up - cannot WAIT for his album.

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/2903/superbass.png

 

// 06

// Nicki Minaj

//

 

"And yes you'll get slapped if you're lookin', hoe"

 

This isn't what I expected from Nicki. This isn't what I wanted from Nicki. But this is what we got from Nicki, even if it was at swift insistence, and I'm bloody glad we got it. Super Bass is as pure a pop song as ever has been recorded; a joyful, shimmering blitz of a song, twinning Minaj's quickfire rapping with a smooth, bouncing chorus and even popping in a middle-8 of starry wonder to retain her badass pink edge. Super Bass is a love song to a man with rhythm, and we're all gonna sing it right back.

http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/5966/wefoundlove.png

 

// 05

// Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris

//

 

"We found love in a hopeless place"

 

I've resented giving Calvin a credit on this from the very beginning, as he contributes no vocals, but as I consider what to write here, I realised that his contribution might as well be vocal, because the euphoric beats Rihanna used to demonstrate her carefree, careering persona for this particular single (shown in both the superb video and her divisive X Factor performances) are entirely of his creation and are more emotional than any words he could speak. They're the ecstatic release that matches the vibrant squalor depicted in the video, both joyfully liberating and hopelessly impersonal, a place of loss both positive and disastrous. And it's Rihanna's vocal, reaching a crystalline peak of painful vulnerability on this track, that gives haunting life to the story behind the club masterpiece.

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/7094/brumalia.png

 

// 04

// Patrick Wolf

//

 

"And I can't do this alone / But we can do this so much better / Together"

 

Together spins you into its ethereal uplift straight away, the surprised strike of a harp suggesting this is Patrick Wolf as you know and love him. But then the electronic stomping begins, only underpinned by the distant strumming of some strings. This is next-level Wolf, a transcendent piece of musical glory that reads and feels a communal anthem, soldiers standing on a hill looking to the future with glistening hope. Wolf's arch, flying vocals bely as much past tragedy as winning victory, but the encompassing of darkness only bolsters the power of the filling orchestration as it peaks higher and higher, choral cries and spinning strings reverberating upwards and dissipating in a quiet note of quivering triumph.

 

http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/3456/mhirm.png

 

// 03

// Loreen

//

 

"Although I've made up my mind / My heart is refusing me"

 

Like Florence, sort of, if she hunched over, restricted her vocal range and went a bit disco. But those all might be reasons to like Loreen more. Instead of flying off into the distance, Loreen's vocals fall and bounce off the floor around her, echoing around her and trapping her in her own desolate solace, someone emotionally reeling admist clueless revellers. It's the sort of song perfect for a silent disco, the kind of thing you could feel the pain from merely by seeing the singer emote. The vocal effects wind her increasingly pained cries into the pounding synths, wounds unseen and untended as pathetic loneliness turns in on her.

http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/2664/somebody.png

 

// 02

// Gotye feat. Kimbra

//

 

"Told myself that you were right for me / But felt so lonely in your company"

 

The simple, rhythmic structure of Gotye's breakthrough hit is what makes it magical. It gently creeps, seeming an unassuming beat to underpin the tune, but as it continues, steady under the increasingly anguished vocals of Gotye and the bitter interjection of Kimbra, it reveals its menace, the ticking clock of continued life to counteract the characters' self-absorption. From it, too, spring those darker, heavier sounds, finally doubling up in the chorus to pack that devastated punch. It's the double-tracking of Gotye's vocals in the end, too, that gets me - so wounded by this break-up that he can only split into two to effectively convey his emotion. Add all these technically ingenious elements to a set of lyrics that so simply lay out the tragic hindsight and the keen anger of a spurned lover with soft realisations like the one quoted above, and you, somehow, have a #1 hit.

 

---

 

The number one will be revealed at 10 o'clock sharp! Any guesses...?