W/E: 02/10/2010

Bruno Mars - Just The Way You Are



His ‘official’ debut single now, Bruno Mars was probably one of my favourite things about music in late 2010. ‘Just The Way You Are’ was insanely big at back then, and though I think its become overplayed now I did love this quite a lot at the time – and so did many people at school I seem to recall.

It’s just kind of hard to hate a song that’s so positive about a woman and her beauty in a way that was refreshingly not outright objectification. In all honesty, this is probably the first song we’ve come across that has become a classic and I am quite pleased about that. Because it is rather lovely, and actually puts across a far healthier message to both girls and boys than songs about money, hoes and swag. Sometimes, we just need a damn good honest love song.

Emma's Imagination - Focus



Last top ten single as a result of Sky1’s “Must Be The Music” and now and the second top ten in three weeks for Emma’s Imagination. Of the three tracks I’ve had to review, this one is by far and away my favourite. It’s do moody, and dark and quite a way away from her previous hit “This Day”. I’m not saying I’m a fan of Emma’s Imagination, but if an album was to appear I think I might have to check it out. Because I really like this

Alex Gaudino - I'm In Love (I Wanna Do It)



And we’ve reached yet another track that I have absolutely no recollection of. It’s alright in all honesty, but I find it a wee bit repetitive and there’s nothing really special about this to make it stand out. Probably why I’d forgotten it. To give it something, whoever the girl is singing on this has a good voice and her parts are what make this

The chorus is vaguely coming back to me, but this is just forgettable dance fodder as far as I’m concerned and the chorus does kill what is built up in the verses, which are really quite good

I find just the way you are so annoying, overrated and bad but the lyrics are quite nice so I'll give it a kind score of 2.5/10

No recollection of the other 2

W/E: 09/10/2010

Tinie Tempah feat Eric Turner - Written In The Stars



Best Tinie Tempah song ever!!! I seriously loved this and must have played it on a loop about 50 times after I’d heard it for the first time. Rappers talking about the ‘struggle’ and what not is not a new concept at all, but what makes this for me is Eric Turner and his beautifully sung chorus – and I gather it’s the same for a lot of other people too. Tinie’s good here and everything but he just can’t hold a candle to what Eric Turner does here

If we were subjected to about 4,000 different versions of “Read All About It” a year later – could we at least have an Eric Turner solo version of this? I could listen to this chorus for days, in fact I should probably change my opening statement from “Best Tinie Tempah song ever” to “Best Tinie Tempah chorus ever”.

Labrinth - Let The Sun Shine



And here’s yet another ‘so happy sounding I can’t in all good conscience hate this’ song. Let The Sun Shine is nice and all that, but it does bore me a little especially when you think that ‘Earthquake’ was probably waiting in the wings at this time

Like I said, this is all very nice and I do like it for the positive sound its host too but it’s all just a bit dull for me – and clearly filler for Labrinth too with his album not even reaching stores until early 2012.

Adele - Make You Feel My Love



Surging into the top ten after a no doubt run of the mill wannabe diva performance on X Factor, Adele’s version of ‘Make You Feel My Love’ marks her first top ten in a decade where she would go on to astronomical success. Of course, in October 2010 we hadn’t yet heard ‘Rolling In The Deep’ and that level of success could never have been predicted

Her version is nice enough, but I’ve always found the song on the boring side no matter who the singer was. The lyrics are beautiful, but the whole affair is always a little too slow and sad for me.

Enrique Iglesias feat Nicole Scherzinger - Heartbeat



If it wasn’t for the fact Nicole Scherzinger is present in the video, I probably would have forgotten about ‘Heartbeat’ all together by now. It was a very ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ kind of top ten hit but I will concede that this is A LOT better than Enrique’s previous outing with “I Like It” and almost seems like a masterpiece when compared to some of Scherzinger’s solo output.

Iglesias & Scherzinger were one of those duet partners that you wouldn't think would ever work together, but no one was too shocked when they did either. ‘Heartbeat’ is a nice listen, the two actually have chemistry and it’s nice hear them both sing about something a little heartfelt for a change.

Absolutely hate written in the stars with a passion. Overplayed, way over loved at my school when released and it is so generic and awful. As I am feeling kind I'll give it 0.5/10

Like let the sun shine. Nothing great but nice song (7/10)

Make you feel my love is beautiful and amazing (11/10)

I actually forgot about heartbeat but remember the song straight away without even replaying it. Quite good but nothing great (6/10)

Back when Tinie was bossing it. Iconic song. Labrinth's track was great too, "feel-good" definitely the right word.

 

Other 2 were dull as dishwater.

I love Written In The Stars but the heavy breathes after every line by Eric Turner are really annoying.

W/E: 16/10/2010

 

Cee Lo Green - Forget You

 

 

A while back I said that I was pleased when Jason DeRulo’s single “Ridin Solo” finally gave men a don’t give an F break up anthem, well five months down the line and we have another although the two vastly differ. ‘Forget You’ (as I will be calling it here) is simply a fantastic break up and burn song that you can’t help but imagine yourself singing to an ex who’d messed you about a bit

 

It’s poppy, fun and light demeanour masks the bitterness and anger very well here and ‘Forget You’ is all the better for it. It’s quite possibly the nicest screw you song ever written. This was SO insanely popular around my parts at the time, and I think it’s probably because the message here is so universal. We’ve all had the partner who’s not treated us well, or taken advantage of our good nature and for three and a half minutes our frustrated feelings are vocalised perfectly. One of my favourite songs of the decade.

 

Robbie Williams & Gary Barlow - Shame

 

 

Now, I like Robbie as much as the next guy and I like a little bit of Take That as well but Barlow and Williams had never seemed more out of date and old news as they did here. Sure, for me this was probably due to the fact I was born in July 1995 so completely missed Take That’s initial era so the novelty and nostalgia factors of seeing Robbie and Gary on the same record together is totally lost

 

And that’s what the matter with ‘Shame’ – it is lyrically honest at least, but music is coming second to the fact that Barlow & Williams are in the same song for the firs time in 16 years and it’s like someone forgot to put in a good melody. Lyrically the song alludes to the years that the two weren’t exactly best friend but it’s just too nice to be interesting – they could’ve made an awesome song about their adversity and subsequent make up but ‘Shame’ is not awesome, it’s dull.

 

To think, we could have had a ‘No Regrets Part II’ or something but instead we got this. A shame.

 

Swedish House Mafia - Miami 2 Ibiza

 

 

Eugh, this was so annoyingly everywhere amongst my friends at the time. There was probably a time when I found this at least somewhat bearable but I heard it way too many times in late 2010 for me to ever enjoy it again – and that’s not even an exaggeration. Every party, every bus rise, it was seemingly constantly played on the TV into my schools cafeteria and some girls danced to it at our schools talent contest

 

It became white noise to me, utterly annoying and I’ll take pleasure in never hearing it for about 30 more years.

 

Kings Of Leon - Radioactive

 

 

Kings of Leon fans hate me. Well, I assume so as I gladly admit that I was one of those glory fans who latched on at the end of 2008 when ‘Sex on Fire’ and ‘Use Somebody’ were both absolutely massive and hadn’t been overplayed yet. Those two songs are utter anthems, and much bigger than the band itself really. They had crossover appeal, but digging a bit deeper into Kings of Leon’s back catalogue shows that they were changes from the usual sound

 

‘Radioactive’ seems to be more in tune with what they’d done before, but to us idiot glory fans it was dull and boring compared to the two songs we knew. I went off them quickly, and to this day I maintain and admit I was a glory fan into a band for a year because they’d done two good songs and were deemed the cool thing. ‘Radioactive’ does just bore me in comparison unfortunately

 

 

 

 

 

Really like forget you, like shame and radioactive and hate Miami 2 Ibiza with a passion

Good reviews! I'll never forget hearing Forget You for the first time (the explicit version of course), what a riot!

 

I really enjoyed that week. Those were 4 exciting new entries, even if some of the songs weren't great. I didn't know Kings of Leon until Sex On Fire either but I'm still very much a fan now. Funny how three more songs called Radioactive have been released since then--Marina, Rita Ora, Imagine Dragons--but none of them made top ten so I guess we won't get reviews of those! :lol: :(

That was a great week as I don't think many expected Forget You to beat Shame to the top - I got mega sick of Forget You over about the next six months but it's good to listen to it again now, it majorly defined that autumn for me. Also the last ever song I bought on CD single as I couldn't decide which version I preferred and the CD had them both, before they basically became impossible to buy in stores.

 

...is it really bad I absolutely adored Miami 2 Ibiza? It sounded incredible in clubs and had seen Tinie Tempah go from the slightly irritating dude on 'Pass Out' to the slightly less-irritating guy on 'Written In The Stars' to being part of some SHM brilliance. Now there's about five hundred identical-sounding songs out there but it and 'One' stood out a hell of a lot more at the time.

W/E: 23/10/2010

Duck Sauce - Barbra Streisand



The most relevant Barbra had ever been to my generation, and she wasn’t even featured! Unlike ‘Riverside’ I actually appreciated the novelty and fun of this track for a while until it became annoying, and looking at its chart run I am surprised to see it wasn’t really THAT massive at all

There’s not much you can say about this, it just repeats the ‘ooo-woo-ooo’ sound over and over again before randomly saying ‘Barbra Streisand’ on a loop for 3 minutes. In 2014, this seems old, dated and almost unbelievable that it was actually a thing and popular but back in 2010? Turning your head dramatically and saying ‘Barbra Streisand’ was pretty darn funny. And none of us even really knew who she was, which makes it all the more amusing in my head.

Joe McElderry - Ambitions



Back with yet another happy go lucky cover about overcoming struggles, Glee are back! Wait? What? This is an X Factor winner? Oh look at that it is. Joe, Joe, Joe I liked you for about one performance, his excellent rendition of Robbie’s “No Regrets”, before I moved onto to Olly.

There was potential for Joe to have become the biggest male X-Factor star to date, he had the voice and the looks for sure but some kind of musical disaster happened between December 2009 and this point. I’m also pretty sure this isn’t even his song, I’m sure I read it’s a cover. This is NOT a song to start a career on, it actually should have been used as his winners single as it is better than listening to him drone out ‘The Climb’. But still, with this he was kind of doomed from the start.

Mike Posner - Cooler Than Me



A song for anyone who has ever felt like someone is looking down at them, a song to shame all the people who feel they are better than you – for me, Cooler Than Me was one of the more relatable songs of the year. High School can be a jungle, and people often do think they’re a cut above and this is just a big ‘F You’ anthem for those people

It may not seem as it would be, but this song is very quotable and weirdly meaningful for me in a way. I love the ‘Behind your makeup, nobody even knows who you are’ line, and Posner’s lyrics have a confidence that convince you that the person being sung about is the one in the wrong. All in all, just a really cool song with a lot of good memories attached as well as a surprisingly strong moral point. You’re not better than anyone else, kids, remember that. Mike Posner said so.

'Cooler Than Me' should really be a classic. <3

 

I loved reading tweets around this time that said "Why is Barbra Streisand top 10 on iTunes with a song called Duck Sauce!?" Hilarious!

W/E: 30/10/2010

 

Katy Perry - Firework

 

 

Now, don’t get me wrong I like ‘Firework’ as a song, its good pop and I’m all for the intended message behind it but the act of telling people they’re a ‘firework’ has always kind of stopped me from loving it. I’m sure Perry and her 16 writers mean to say that by being a ‘firework’ the person in question is something that lights up and is beautiful and appreciated. Nice. However, I’ve never been able to look past the fact that fireworks light up for about four seconds, are appreciated for those 4 seconds and then everyone forgets they ever saw it and moves on with their life. So, to me, this song is more a depressing commentary on life than anything else

 

But, cynicism withstanding, thats no to mean I dislike Firework; it’s perfectly pleasant sounding and I think it’s probably the best she’s ever sounded. I do have a soft spot for the ‘Boom-Boom-Boom, even brighter than the Moon’ parts even if they are a bit over the top and cheesy. I’m fairly sure I would love this if I could just see beyond the flaw in the whole firework metaphor, still as Katy Perry songs about self help go this is certainly better than ‘Roar’

 

Jay Sean feat Nicki Minaj - 2012 (End of the World)

 

 

God, I had completely forgotten that this ever existed! Not surprising too, this isn’t all that memorable really and its sad that this is probably the last we’ll ever see of Jay Sean too. A once promising British RnB star taken over by the glamour of dance-RnB fusion

 

‘2012’ is just boring as a song, Minaj lifts it slightly but ultimately I’ve forgotten how the song started before its end. I like the whole ‘make the most of life’ message, but there are much better songs that get that message across and ‘2012’ is just boring for me.

 

N-Dubz - Best Behaviour

 

 

So, after being (un)pleasantly surprised by their previous top ten ‘We Dance On’ earlier in 2010, Dappy and co return to the normality of mediocrity with ‘Best Behaviour’ which to be fair is more listenable than the likes of ‘Papa Can You Hear Me’ or ‘Ouch’.

 

The last top ten single from them, and I’m not sorry to see them go one bit

 

Yet they spawned 5 top ten singles thereafter as soloists surprisingly!

I thought '2012' would be the start of a few songs all about that year given how big the Mayan apocalypse story was, but that really ended up being the only one. The last time I heard it was a few minutes into a house party on January 1st 2012 and never since!

You can tell you've put a lot of thought into these. Keep it up.

These are incredible! Absolutely ADORE 'Cooler Than Me' and 'Barba Streisand' from the last set. Never knew 'Miami 2 Ibiza' was that big in the UK! I thought it was a more crash-and-burn-with-no-longevity top 5 hit like 'Trampoline' was for Tinie.

Really like Barbara Streisand. So catchy

Ambitions is ok and really don't like cooler than me- his voice annoys me

Firework is an amazing song. Katy produced another great song and love the lyrics

Hate the jay Sean and n-Dubz songs

 

Love this thread

Just caught up, this thread is always a pleasure to read! Anyway, as for the last few I really like 'Firework', quite the anthem, although I prefer 'Teenage Dream' and 'E.T.' from that album. Oddly, '2012' and 'Best Behaviour' were deleted off my iTunes the other day, I found them both really cool at the time but find them dreadful now. :lol:

W/E: 06/11/2010

 

Cheryl Cole - Promise This

 

 

‘Promise This’ seems to have picked up something of a negative reputation over the last four years or so, and I really don’t understand why as I bloody love it. It’s a great little pop song, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of ‘Parachute’ but its certainly her best song to reach number one. I always found ‘Fight For This Love’ is a good song wasn’t great for her voice, and ‘Call My Name’ is literally 85% instrumental, though I do have to admit I’ve actually been enjoying ‘Crazy Stupid Love’ quite a bit recently.

 

Rihanna - Only Girl (In The World)

 

 

In my lifetime I cannot recall a time when an artist has been so big, omnipresent and invasive as Rihanna was in late 2010/early 2011 (Gaga in 2009 maybe), and with good reason as well as she really stepped up her efforts with the ‘Loud’ era – well, her writers did as Rihanna doesn’t have one writing credit on that album. She was EVERYWHERE at this point in time, particularly with people around my age and I knew so many girls who copied her red hairstyle at the time

 

‘Only Girl’ is a very good song, and I certainly don’t think Rihanna would be where she is now without it however I do feel it has been overshadowed now by ‘We Found Love’. She may not have written a word, but she sells what she’s singing very well and by the end you kind of want her to be the only girl in the world, she makes a very good case for it.

 

Nelly - Just a Dream

 

 

Nelly had long since fallen into obscurity for me before ‘Just a Dream’ came around. The last I remembered of him before this was some god awful collaboration with Fergie in late 2007, and to be honest I had all but forgotten that he existed by this point and to see him back in the top ten was a bit jarring and odd

 

Especially seen as though ‘Just a Dream’ was the best thing I’d heard from him since ‘Work It’ in 2003. I loved Nelly’s first two albums, they hold many childhood classics such as ‘Ride With Me’, ‘Dilemma’ and of course ‘Hot in Here’. But in the mid 00’s he seemed to just release bad song after bad song, the low point being ‘Flap Your Wings’, so this was a very welcome return to form.