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18 FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE SPECTRUM

 

“We are shining, and we will never be afraid again”

 

 

17 CALVIN HARRIS feat. FLORENCE WELCH SWEET NOTHING

 

“I’m trying to hope with nothing to hold”

 

 

Also know as a lesson for "album acts" in how to steal yourself a couple of #1 singles. It's to Florence's credit that her transition to chart queen hasn't felt at all forced, such was the degree with which it took us all by surprise. That's not to say it's undeserved - I was quick to jump on the "Spectrum" bandwagon when it was merely an exceptional album track on Ceremonials but even I wasn't expecting it to set the world on fire after the equally lovely "Never Let Me Go" bombed (had those rumours about it being the theme to Titanic 3D been true could Flo have had three chart toppers? Shame). However, I also wasn't expecting what seemed to be an opportunistic remix to become the soundtrack to Claire Balding and Sue Barker's verbal ejaculation over some people who could swim and run quite well.

 

Such was Queen Florence of Kworbland's new power, she even managed to break that Brétastic run of Calvin Harris and deliver him another #1 with his name on the cover. "Sweet Nothing" edges it here largely because it makes this spiel flow better, but it wouldn't be so high up in the first place were it not worthy. Calvin has been as guilty as anyone in numbing our brains with a dizzying array of identikit drops over the last couple of years but here he manufactures a euphoric rush that's utterly convincing - and boosted immesurably by Florence's perfectly pitched howl. Quick, someone give her Rihanna's number and she'll be positively unstoppable.

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16 USHER CLIMAX

 

“We made a mess of what used to be love”

 

 

15 ARCTIC MONKEYS R U MINE?

 

“Unfair we’re not somewhere misbehaving for days”

 

 

Starts and ends of relationships are hardly original topics for songs but 2012 delivered songs near-perfectly delivering outlooks on both. In the finest narrative tradition I'll start with the end, and an artist who a year ago I wouldn't have expected to figure here. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed some of Usher's previous output, but it was feared by many that he would be forever lost to the land of the Pitbullosaurus so "Climax"'s cleverly nuanced minimalist beats came as a lovely surprise. Possibly the definition of a slow grower in my affections as well as my ears, the lovely surprise eventually became something of a classic.

 

With "R U Mine?" you couldn't get much further away from "Climax"'s reserved mourning if you tried. But after a duff single led me to ignore their last album I was firmly won over again by this. Lyrically it's reminiscent of their "Dancefloor" days but what used to be a spindly spine of guitars is now a maniacal fuzz that bears more than a passing resemblance to those emitted by ex-producer Josh Homme. Explains why I enjoyed it so much really.

Sweet Nothing and Spectrum are both great, and it's a great pairing. Calvin definitely makes Spectrum a lot stronger for me and Sweet Nothing is so much better than if he'd got a typical contributor on it.

 

Never thought much to R U Mine? It's alright but couldn't get into it at all.

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14 G.O.O.D MUSIC CLIQUE

 

“Blame it on the pigment, we live with no limits”

 

 

13 PLAN B ill MANORS

 

“What you looking at, you little rich boy?”

 

 

Proof if any was needed that not only is British hip-hop now capable of matching and even outshining the motherland of the genre, it has also developed an unmistakeable identity of its own. That is in no small part due to the unrelenting ambition of American rappers and producers in pushing new boundaries. You'll probably be bored of me waxing lyrical about Kanye West by now but here his decadent production is only the story - Jay-Z's typically imperious verse and Big Sean's addictive hook are equally important and that's what edges this ahead of the other two West singles which have already appeared.

 

Of course, immaculately arranged productions can only get you so far. While Kanye has half a dozen moments that probably outshine "Clique", Plan B is unlikely to ever top the sheer fury of "ill Manors". Am I the only one who thought that had more radio stations been daring enough to take a punt on it this would have been absolutely massive?

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12 MUSE SUPREMACY

 

“Policies have risen up and overcome the brave”

 

 

11 NO DOUBT PUSH AND SHOVE

 

“I take the bait, it’s a risky business”

 

 

Let these two be a lesson to Korn, Enter Shikari et al - if you're going to nick ideas from dubstep, don't go too far. The former did the business with "Get Up!" last year because they had Skrillex at the helm, but with that excepted this year has been a bit of a clusterfuck of misguided experiments. Muse just about held it together with the monumentally silly "Unsustainable" but it was trumped in the silliness stakes by the band's Olympic megalomaniac opus and even moreso by what really should have been the theme to "Skyfall". It's all very much Muse in typical anti-establishment mode until Matt Bellamy unleashes the scream to put every other vocalist on the planet to shame.

 

No Doubt were seemingly too scared to do dubstep for a whole song, so instead decided to shoehorn an immense chorus breakdown into what is otherwise business as usual. Business as usual wouldn't get it to the verge of my year-end top 10 but luckily said immense chorus breakdown is, well, immense.

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10 PSY GANGNAM STYLE

 

“Heyyyyyy sexy lady!”

 

 

And what.

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09 LINKIN PARK LIES GREED MISERY

 

“Saying that I softened, I was ducking down to reload”

 

 

It took me a while to decide what was my favourite track on Living Things, but a few months after its release "Lies Greed Misery" had elevated itself above the rest simply because it's such a pure distillation of what Linkin Park should be about in 2012 that it's questionable whether the rest of the album was needed at all. A band not unfamiliar with electronica (how many rock acts were releasing remix albums ten years ago?) should feel perfectly at home in today's musical climate but the transition has been an awkward one. Minutes to Midnight was by and large a drums and guitar record while A Thousand Suns was severely lacking in both. What makes "Lies Greed Misery" so fantastic is that it sets its stall out in less than a dozen seconds with Mike Shinoda distorting and chopping up his own rhymes in an unforgettable "Imma be that n-n-n-n-n-nail in your coffin!" and is home and dry little more than two minutes later. Bang, job done.

Yes for Ill Manors and Push & Shove, Gangnam Style - a time and a place for it... the rest I don't care for. Clique is alright though.

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08 SLEIGH BELLS COMEBACK KID

 

“You gotta turn around, never let your guard down”

 

 

Sleigh Bells' second album spawned the best album title of the year (Reign of Terror), probably the most brutal album intro of the year (True Shred Guitar) and definitely the most bewitching pick-up line of the year ("I've got a crush on you / I gotta crush you now") but despite all this the album's lead single stood above the rest. It was, unlike many of the songs here, something of an instant hit for me and still sounds fresh the best part of a year later. The band had a habit on their début of making half a brilliant song and their second record saw a few fully formed songs lacking anything resembling a tune, but "Comeback Kid" sounds like something of a greatest hits record all of its own.

Supremacy was definitely one of the highlights of The 2nd Law, along with Panic Station, it really is classic Muse. Still really disappointed by the two singles and the entire middle half of that album, but the very start and very end do, fortunately, make up for it. I look forward to seeing what your number 1 is!

Clique + Gangnam Style + Comeback Kid = :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub:

 

07 THE BEARDS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER HAVING SEX WITH A BEARDED MAN

 

“He rubs his bristles on your mammary glands!”

 

 

It has occurred to me that my countdown so far has been remarkably serious. No matter, you can always rely on me backing something deliriously silly sooner or later and this year it's The Beards. In the finest comedy song tradition "You Should Consider Having Sex With A Bearded Man" is teeming with ridiculous metaphors and come-ons, and the Prodigy-apeing video is a joy as well made all the sweeter by the completely obvious "twist" ending.

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06 MUSE MADNESS

 

“I know I can be wrong, maybe I’m just too headstrong”

 

 

Sorry for inflicting that picture on you, I'm sure Buzzjack is mourning from the lack of GaGa in my year-end countdown this year. When reports surfaced that "Madness" was the sound of Muse "going electropop", I'm not quite sure what people imagined. Some might have even imagined something like that picture. Few imagined it would suit them so well, but the song manages to pull the unlikely trick of sounding completely natural while simultaneously nudging the band forwards into new territory. It's not often that you hear a song where every last note seems to be so methodically planned, and even the predictable crescendo maintains an element of control that was sorely lacking on The Resistance. Said crescendo also carries a surge of acute emotion that gets me even after a few dozen listens, a beacon of personal commitment amid a sea of grand statements and big ideas. One of the bravest songs of the year, and for that alone it deserves very high commendation.

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05 GREEN DAY 99 REVOLUTIONS

 

“We live in troubled times, and I’m ninety nine percent sure that something’s up”

 

 

It seems absurd that any band can be in a state of crisis when two songs from one of their albums can muscle their way into blockbuster films before said album has even hit stores, yet that’s the predicament Green Day faced with the release of ¡Tré! this month. String-drenched piano ballad “The Forgotten” rather more conspicuously soundtracked the final installment of the Twilight Saga, yet anyone who made it all the way to the credits of Will Ferrell’s latest The Campaign would have been given the same treat that greeted anyone who got to see GD at a festival this summer.

 

Said treat usually came in the band’s encore sandwiched between “American Idiot” and “Good Riddance”, which probably says more about it than I ever could. Yet I’ll try anyway. “99 Revolutions” breaks exactly zero sonic ground for Green Day, and the topic of the Occupy protests is hardly a quantum leap either given the band’s subject material over the last decade. But what on the surface seems conservative (ironic, huh?) actually conspires to make it the most memorable song from a trilogy of albums that wasn’t lacking in wacky ideas. There are no rapping or disco rhythms and neither is there any evidence of some of the slapdash, half-baked and frankly grisly lyricism that has marred potentially great GD songs ever since Billie Joe started wearing eyeliner. Instead we get a straightforward and yet still endearing sketch of the protests from a band of millionaires that really shouldn’t be able to write one. And that’s the nicest absurdity of all.

 

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04 GOTYE feat. KIMBRA SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW

 

“You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness”

 

 

Officially my favourite British #1 of the year, and the highest selling as well so aren't we all clever. Moan all you like about this being a 2011 song but having listened to it maybe three times last year I took a punt on it when it was released here last New Year's Day in the hope that it'd grow on me. As you might have guessed, it did. Probably the only time my opinion of a song will mirror its chart run so well, by the middle of February my love for it reached critical mass just as everyone else started to agree. And if the countdown that's happening now on Radio 1 is anything to go by, they still do. Well done to all.

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03 LANA DEL REY BORN TO DIE

 

“Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain”

 

 

It's been a fairly good year for musical women competing for my affections. Alexis Krauss told me she was going to crush me, Florence implored me to say her name but one stood above the rest. "Video Games" may have snagged most people but I wasn't entirely convinced of the hype around Lana until this. Her tragic starlet persona is far better served by dramatic trip hop beats and decadent strings than by some of her more understated material, and the whole thing is so immersive it's hard not to get completely swept up by all the melodrama.

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02 THE KILLERS RUNAWAYS

 

“Like a stumbling ghost I haunt these halls”

 

 

Speaking of melodrama, here are the masters. The Killers' "return to rock" was fairly well broadcast before we even heard any of Battle Born so it was little surprise when "Runaways" premiered and it sounded like a Sam's Town offcut - albeit one with a massive chorus in finest Killers tradition. Did we have any need for yet more vapid Springsteen impersonations? No, we didn't. And further listens revealed that we hadn't got one. What we actually had was a preview of a rejuvenated band more interested in writing engaging narratives into their songs and none moreso than here. The massive chorus doesn't do any harm, though.

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01 THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM 45

 

“The song just keeps repeating, drop the needle again”

 

 

Yup, you probably should have guessed it. It seems absurd to think that the first time I heard this back at the start of summer I dismissed it as a weak comeback single that would have been no more than an average album track on The '59 Sound. Thank god I gave it a second chance - and a third. And a fourth. And so on. The lyric above pretty much sums it up - this couldn't have been anything other than my #1 as it's the song I came back to most during 2012 and the one that has now replaced "Niggas In Paris" as the one I play in the final minutes of a run to get me over the line. Altogether now...

Great choice of #1 record. The album didn't live up to expectations but "45" was a brilliant single.

 

Got to say I feel slightly alien about "Somebody That I Used To Know" - it was a big hit on my chart in 2011 when it was massive in Australia (and got to #30 in my EOY chart in 2011) and then when it started to get big here I had long got over it and moved on to newer music but I was thinking how bizarre it was that songs in this internet era where the world is more connected than ever, could still take years to cross the globe. Glad it did though.

Not massive on your top two, I never cared much for Runaways. LOVING much of the top ten though, in particular Somebody That I Used To Know (snap EOY chart position), Born To Die and Gangnam Style :D

 

Also really good to see Ill Manors and Climax here, even though the former missed my EOY top 100, I still like it quite a bit more than most of the forum/Plan B fans seemed to.