So I thought I'd write a review of the year, mentioning all the really massive sellers and picking out some of my personal faves. Note that all opinions are my own and don't be offended if they're different to yours (seems obvious but you'd be surprised how many don't follow :P ) and yes, inevitably I've missed out some songs that others would include but again it's only my opinion! If you fancy reviewing those I've missed (or indeed those I haven't) then feel free to reply :)

 

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2012's been a bit of a funny year in the world of pop. At first glance it's a musical landscape that easily seems to continue the trend of the decade so far - the top 20 sellers of the year have Rihanna present and correct, as she has been for every year so far of the 2010s. Jessie J, Flo Rida, David Guetta and more are also there again, all linked by the synth-heavy dance-pop that's defined the last few years and even as we close this year seems to rest easy at the top of the pop charts. Whether it's a good thing perhaps depends on your generation - if you're over 30 it might all sound a bit naff, but for those a decade or two younger - particularly those who turned about 10 this year, this is perhaps the only 'pop' music you've ever known. It's the music that all songs from now on can simply aspire to be, your 'year zero' that will be nostalgic of youthful youtube views and Spotify streams forever. The likes of Rida and Jessie are to 2012 what, say, Nelly and Shakira were to 2002. What Take That and Shakespear's Sister were to 1992, Boy George and Alison Moyet to 1982 - huge pop stars that older folks may grumble at, muttering something about not being as good as the old days, but to a generation they're the most awesome people on the planet. Loving those '82 synths/'92 breakbeats/'02 guitars/'12 synths!

 

Saying that, there's the feelings of something rumbling under the ground, waiting to be found or rediscovered. Already people are tipping 2013 to be The Return of Rock, a genre that's been fairly unrepresented in the singles chart for about half a decade. While we haven't had many huge rock anthems this year, some of the year's biggest sellers display quite a notable difference from the put-your-hands-in-the-air-and-party sound we've been long used to. It's still remarkable, for example, to note the success of a certain Australasian twosome known as Gotye and Kimbra.

 

When Somebody That I Used To Know hit these shores at the very beginning of the year, it had already been a substantial hit overseas. But even so the British charts very soon saw it shoot up to the top and sound unlike anything else in the top 40. A number 1, shock horror, with no pounding synths. No rap break in the middle and certainly no dubstep drops. Instead a basic acoustic guitar and some xylophone coupled with a quiet, restrained, almost mumbled delivery from both singers in the verses came to many like a huge breath of fresh air - and sometimes, as this song proved, it's good to be different and stand out from the crowd. By Christmas the song had sold over 1.3 million copies, putting it up there with one of the biggest selling songs ever, let alone 2012. Neither Gotye or Kimbra have been seen in the chart since, but indeed why should they need to? They can happily ride off the back of their one collaboration for the rest of their lives. For those used to the Guetta sound the song could seem dull, almost offensive at first - where's the euphoria? The heavy 4/4 beat? There's not even any autotune! Nonetheless it became one of the biggest songs of the year to truly cross over to an older audience, sounding like it could have been released in any of the last five decades and sound fresh every time.

 

Another huge seller, though about as different to Gotye & Kimbra as you can get, again for once came from a country that for once was neither here or the United States. Canadian Idol contestant Carly Rae Jepsen had ended 2011 scoring a big hit in her native land, and a few months into 2012 it made its way here. Again, it defied many expectations. On your first listen to Call Me Maybe you wonder if you've gone back in time to the late 80s or 90s. Yes it uses synths, but much more sparingly compared to the all-guns-blazing sound we're used to in this decade. Instead it takes a much more simplistic, bubblegum-pop sound you could imagine Kylie Minogue releasing circa 1989 or Britney Spears a decade later. "Hey, I just met you - and this is crazy - but here's my number - so call me maybe" she sings and a million songwriters gnash their teeth in envy. Of course! It doesn't have to be complicated, it doesn't have to be groundbreaking, just be as simple and catchy as possible and you're guaranteed a hit. Again it stood out - mostly to a younger audience instead of the more older crowd on Gotye's side - and soon joined him in the million sellers club, Carly not having any major follow-up solo hits to date but being rescued from one-hit wonder status when a collaboration with Owl City went top 10 later in the year.

 

If there was any song that indicated, though, that rock was on the verge of returning, it's that by the curiously named 'fun.', complete with lower-case F and full stop at the end. We Are Young (feat. Janelle Monae) not only gets this author's pick as the best song of the year, but easily wins the best song of the decade so far. Starting with a simple marching drumbeat and basic piano, it entices you in and then blows you away with a euphoric, punch-the-air-and-sing-along chorus that the first few times I heard it, it moved me to tears. And again, it achieves it not using pounding synths but with heavy drums and soaring choral vocals. It needs to do little else for its remaining three minutes as it has you gripped tightly already, never leaving your head and feeling like every time you listen to it you're witness to a musical event rather than just a song. Sales by Christmas were very close to a million and it seems surely inevitable that it will pass that magical milestone during next year.

 

Although the three tracks above were all products of a new-school of acts, the faces of the (very) recent past few years still had it in them. Remember David Guetta? Perhaps worrying that his dominance of the charts over the last several years was starting to count against him, no longer seen as a world-class DJ but a cheesy pop producer, the very start of the year saw the ascendance to the top of the greatest song he's ever made. Titanium, with Ozzie singer Sia doing her best Adele impression over the top, defines the word 'euphoric' so much it deserves an entry in the dictionary. The singing is immense. The beat is the equivalent of the entire Earth being grabbed by the hand of God and thrown to and from the wall of the universe like a tennis ball for three minutes. Everything about is huge and like 'We Are Young' leaves you breathless at the end. Even the biggest critiques of Guetta after listening to this had to go, ok, fair play dude, you've still got it. An attempt to match the magic came in the autumn when he brought back Sia for 'She Wolf (Falling To Pieces)' which has some initial joy but one listen to Titanium again and it's won you back over.

 

Elsewhere in 2012 land, Nicki Minaj successfully completed her journey from 2010's "Annoying woman who raps over other people's songs", to 2011's "Still annoying woman who occasionally raps over other people's songs though Super Bass isn't bad" to truly turning things round and cementing herself as a solo star this year. Starships sold the most, a summery song that took advantage of a brief March heatwave to rise to number 2 and sell bucketloads, combining a singalong chorus with a heavy Guettaesque beat and, most amusingly of all, a sudden segue into 19th-century classic Twinkle Twinkle Little Star during one of the verses. It was good, yet follow-up Pound The Alarm was even better, using exactly the same formula but the instrumental breakdowns literally sounding like all the alarms in the world being - ahem - pounded at once, enveloping the listeners ears with a seemingly chaotic yet irresistable wall of noise. Taking a trip over to Scandinavia, the DJ collective of Axwell, Steve Angello, and Sebastian Ingrosso - better known together as the Swedish House Mafia - shockingly called it a day and split this year, despite being one of the best acts of the decade so far. They'd ended 2010 with two of the best songs of that whole year (One and Miami 2 Ibiza) and continued the run nicely this year with the buzzing, dubstep-influenced collaboration with Knife Party that was Antidote, the etheral electronic beauty of Greyhound and finally - finally - getting the number 1 they'd deserved for so long with their final single Don't You Worry Child. They will be much missed indeed.

 

Closer to home, new girl group Stooshe launched with a blaze of glory at the start of the year and by the end were missing the top 20 with their singles, but they did at least give us a future classic with Black Heart, a Motown-influenced groover which sounds like a blatant commercial attempt at a hit single but it does its job so well you don't care, winning you over from the very first listen. Then there's former grime king Wiley, who may not be the credible underground force he once was but boy does he know how to write a good tune. Heatwave was perhaps the ultimate sound of the summer, a repetitive chorus featuring the easy-to-remember "On my body, on my body, put your hands upon my body" and Wiley rapping his verses over a sun-drenched array of general synthy drums and bleeps. Ironically for a year that barely had any sun at all and is mostly remembered for half the country's villages disappearing under almost apocalyptic floods, even as I write this in December it takes you back to a seemingly blissful scorcher of a summer that technically didn't actually exist. You know you've written something with power when it messes with your historical meteorological memory.

 

By the time we reached our Olympic summer, out of all the songs released so far arguably Gotye & Kimbra and Carly's tracks had caused the biggest cultural impact. Everyone knew them both, they were played and referenced regularly and surely, unless something came out of nowhere in the last few months, they'd be perhaps jointly crowned as the most remembered two songs of 2012. Right?

 

Step forward, confusing everyone, a 34 year old Korean man wearing sunglasses.

 

"Naje-neun ttasaroun inkanjeo-gin yeoja! Keopi hanjanye yeoyureuraneun pumkyeok i-nneun yeoja" are hardly the most obvious opening lyrics for a song that in just a few weeks would take over not just the world but very possibly a few nearby planets in our solar system. It is now impossible to imagine what life was like before Park Jae-Sang and his demonstration of Gangnam Style. It started out as just a funny little youtube video of 'PSY' (to give his professional name) rapping stuff in Korean, wearing a pink suit and doing a demented dance involving the pretend ride of an imaginary horse. A sizeable hit in his native country soon followed - well of course, he was a big star there, sort of like the South Korean version of Eminem. But come on, surely this is where the story should end - we've had this before with Rebecca Black and her hilariously simplistic 'Friday'. With the late Eduard Khil and his easy-listening Russian anthem involving the repetition of a 'trolololo' sound. Hell, even Keyboard Cat. All were briefly popular and gained many views but none troubled the pop charts, certainly in this country.

 

Except this wasn't just your typical youtube viral. This was a song that, despite its silliness, was catchy enough to play in clubs. A dance craze simple enough to imitate. And, best of all, if you uploaded your own parody or homage, they wouldn't take it down for copyright infringement - indeed it was encouraged. As summer became autumn, Gangnam Style grew and grew and grew until it became the biggest craze to hit pop since perhaps Macarena Mania of 1996. Eventually it wasn't just your expected viral audience of teens and twenty-somethings who knew about it. Your mum knew about it. Your grandma knew about it. And, incredibly, after a few sherries, they were doing the dance in your living room over Christmas. But you didn't mind because you'd done it yourself with your friends at the club the previous week. Even your younger cousins were getting in on the act. More so than Gotye, more so than Carly, more than any other song it united not just every age group, but every country, every nationality in Gangnam Goodness. Indeed the song's probably in your head as you read this paragraph. Ha!

 

It's perhaps ironic that in a year that saw several high-profile breaks from your usual early-2010s synth sound, the one that had the biggest cultural impact of all was one that stuck to it perfectly. Except instead of English it's Korean and has a silly dance coupled with it. Gotye may win the prize of the biggest seller of the year, but ask anyone to name a 2012 song in a few years time and surely Psy's got it in the bag. There's more chance of that than him ever having another hit, anyway.

 

So 2013? Maybe rock will return. Maybe acts like Alt+J, already hotly tipped, will bring back the 'indie rock' sound we haven't heard in so long. Maybe Guetta, Rida et al will fade? And surely at some point the Gangnam revolution has to die down, although too early to predict when. Some things are for sure - Rihanna will release yet another massive single. John Lewis will get another hit with an inoffensive young girl covering an inoffensive old song in inoffensive piano form on an inoffensive advert. And surely out of all the songs to be released over the next twelve months, we will get a couple at least that will be remembered forever. A Gotye/Carly/fun./Psy kinda song. Someone's future favourite song - possibly even mine - could come out in 2013. And my ears can't wait already.

 

Otherwise? Bring it on!

This was a really interesting read! :D

 

I agree with a lot of what you say. Whilst I personally don't think rock will necessarily return to the charts next year (well, not in a massive way), I'm pretty sure acoustic, alternative and adult contemporary styles of music are making a resurgence. I think even Rihanna's record label have also noticed this, judging by her latest two single choices.

 

And you said Somebody That I Used to Know would probably seem boring to people that have been hearing mainly David Guetta, etc. the past few years, but I actually think quite the opposite. I think one of the reasons it did so well in the charts was because people have been hearing David Guetta-esque music for years, so much that Somebody That I Used to Know sounds sooo different. It's so much more complex than David Guetta's songs, it's full of intricate little noises, weird percussion sounds, strings plucking all over the place, all sorts of drums, and every time you listen to the song you always seem to discover something in it that you never heard before. It's so much more fascinating than all those songs that consist of one big fat synth going "dunh dunh dunh dunh" over and over again like we've have in a lot of chart hits, and to me, a bit of flashback to the chart music from pre-2008, which is a good thing in my book.

 

Also, what I think is interesting is that the three biggest hits weren't promoted in the most conventional ways that most chart hits are. Most big hits simply get sent out to radio stations and have a music video made for MTV, and that propels them into the chart. However, We Are Young first entered the US charts due to an episode of Glee, then dropped out, then re-entered after being used in a Superbowl advert, and it was after that it became a hit. Call Me maybe was first propelled into the charts in the US and Europe simply due to Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez uploading a video of them dancing to it on Youtube. Both these songs might not have been such big hits if it wasn't for those less-conventional forms of promotion, and I wonder if the record labels would've even pushed them otherwize, since I think it's fair to say they were quite unexpected hits, despite how catchy they are.

 

Another thing that stood out with 2012 was that to me it seemed like one massive chart hit after another. Like first STIUK, then We Are Young, then Call Me Maybe, then Gangnam Style (hopefully Thrift Shop next). Quite different compared to, say, 2006 and 2007, which seemed a lot more "chaotic" imo, with songs popping out from all over the place.

This is more a personal charts thing so moved.