BillyH

The main noughties dance trends I think of - at least in terms of major top 10 chart success - are UK garage (until 2001), trance (until 2003), looped/funky house (2004-06), electro (2006-07), bassline garage (2007-08) and the modern definition of EDM (from 2009), though all sorts of styles came and went throughout the decade if not quite as hectic as the 90s. Others came close - 2002 looked at one point to be the big year drum & bass was gonna explode into the pop mainstream, after two huge top tens from Puretone and Shy FX early in the year, but it stalled a little after that and only really got going, in chart terms, a few years later. Obviously the genre itself was almost a decade old by that point and had produced big albums from Goldie and Roni Size, but I'm talking in commercial pop terms in the way DJ Fresh, Sigma, Rudimental etc can score #1 singles in a way that would be unthinkable a decade ago. I remember when Pendulum only just got top 40 with 'Slam' and in 2005 that was a massive achievement! "Clubland" style Eurodance-pop was kinda always there from 2002-08 but faded in and out of major popularity, with a big run of mainstream success in 2007-08. I think of Scooter's 'The Logical Song' as an early example, and then Come With Me, Everytime We Touch etc right up to the last few Basshunter hits - I think he just lasted into 2009 although obvs '08 was his big year.

Windowlicker.

Thank god for this!! I thought I was the only one. Utter shit the lot of them and one of the genres that's really made me lose a lot of chart love in recent years - they're undoubtably (extremely) popular but leave me hugely cold.

Sweet Like Chocolate = the ANTHEM of Year 5 for me and the rest of my North London primary school class of the time. All of us singing it on a coach trip that summer is a happy memory, the boys changing the primary lyric to "Sweet like chocolate girl" to avoid being ridiculed. As a song I've never been a massive fan but 10/10 for nostalgia.

The first person to reach #1 born in the year 2000 is almost certainly gonna happen before the end of this decade, which is all kinds of terrifying given that I started secondary school that year. Willow Smith almost did it six years ago. (I'm another one who was born just before Sean Kingston btw - and Leon Jackson would have done it had Beautiful Girls missed #1)

...that's quite embarrassing of me, yep sorry :unsure: Missed that line.

This pissed me off big time at the age of 10 as it beat, of all things, 'Witch Doctor' by The Cartoons to the top - I have a Funfax book from the time where I give it one out of five stars. But I've warmed to it since and I love how something this uncommercial not only made #1 but sold so well. 'Animals' had one (heavily distorted) line of lyrics, didn't it? And Flat Beat had that opening (or closing in the video's edit) sample which sounds like "Oh yeah, I used to know Quinnan, he's a real...he's a real jerky" but probably isn't...although in Flat Beat's case it is obviously a spoken sample rather than actual recorded lyrics, and appears seperate from the song so I guess Flat Beat at least does count. Wikipedia lists 'Doop' as one too but that has its title said about a million times during it. Instrumental dance hits can be hard to call as most radio edits have the title of the song added into them ("Carte...Blanche!" "I feel you...over the Airwave" etc) so people know the name of it when they try and buy it. But there are a few that escaped this and still sold tons - Darude's 'Sandstorm' being the biggest that comes to mind.

This is all starting to feel suspiciously planned, as if Drake's management watched Bieber's domination last year and thought "Yep, let's do that".

20: TRAIN - HEY SOUL SISTER (New Entry) Peak: #18 (May 2010) kVpv8-5XWOI My eyes did a double take when I consulted the first list and found this absolutely nowhere to be seen. I then look at when it got added to my iTunes, and suddenly it made sense - not until an almost insultingly late June 2012, just as I was able to start compiling it. Their second appearance in this chart after Drive By, and another 2010 song that's done a lot better than others I loved back then and remained brilliant to this day. Uplifting, summery, building throughout until those final 'Tonight's ring out and you're in heaven. Seeing that peak of just #18 hurts me dearly, although it made up for it with a massive chart run at the time.

21: LABRINTH - LET THE SUN SHINE (Down 7) Peak: #3 (October 2010) u98kNNtofFs Maybe not one that will appear in everyone's decade top 50 - indeed this just misses out on top 20 - but, as in 2012's list, this sun-drenched guilty pleasure tunage remains fabulous to me to this day. As I listen to it now, even at wintertime, I want to propel it right to the top but having a quick sneak at the top 20 I realise it ain't gonna happen. A supremely and annoyingly underrated summer anthem, one that I still fail to understand why on earth it was released in a cold October but #3 is good going even so. One to sit back on a heatwave of a day and pump it out the speakers.

22: EXAMPLE - KICKSTARTS (UP 1) Peak: #3 (June 2010) T9yGcKlYAiw We have our first climber! Several tracks that made the first list but are now absent means that this, originally rated at #23 in 2012, moves up a place as like The Vaccines it's managed to retain its magic all these years later. He may have gone onto greater commercial success with two #1 hits in 2011, both of which I loved at the time, but it's this initial first top 3 hit that will remain his masterpiece and a glorious summer 2010 anthem.

23: THE VACCINES - IF YOU WANNA (Down 5) Peak: #35 (April 2012) uQKjI6395iU Still as brilliant as when I first heard it on, of all things, the Top of the Pops 2011 Christmas special when it had charted outside the top 40 that year. Continued airplay and a 59p reduction finally got it in there early the next year, one of the extremely few rock tracks to do anything in the dance-heavy early 2010s. Also of note is 'A Lack of Understanding' from their album I found in a charity shop not only costing just a pound but actually autographed by the Vaccines themselves!

24: THE VERONICAS - YOU RUIN ME (New Entry) Peak: #8 (November 2014) W_rZ9rHFwGY By the time this came out I was pretty certain at the general shape of my top 50, only for this and one other track to knock me for six in the closing weeks of 2014 and become very late additions. An astounding ballad from the underrated Australian duo that if anything is too low, I just tend to be cautious with *very* recent hits as obviously anything new is going to sound much fresher than something from four years ago. Broken and exhausted by both relationship problems and extreme record label issues that resulted in an entire album being cancelled, they recorded this at 1:30 in the morning as a way of attempting to leave behind the troubles of the past. Brilliantly it ended up as a #1 hit in native Oz, and more surprisingly returned them to the top 10 over here, matching the #8 peak of 'Untouched' in 2009. Absolutely deserved and a great ending to a troubled few years for them. JUNE 2016 UPDATE: Yep, time's been glorious to this and would easily still make the chart today, if indeed higher than the as-mentioned cautious #24 I put it here.

Not the same Naughty Boy - that was a collection of (German?) DJs, the one responsible for 'La La La' etc came later. (although I thought they were the same for years too)

'Save Me' always felt *way* more known than its #70 peak suggested - I saw Darren Styles do a few live sets in the late noughties and the crowd knew every single word. Yeah it's cheesy (as was a lot of Clubland stuff of the era) but a great singalong/hands-in-air fave.

Cascada I lump in with Ultrabeat, Basshunter etc as your standard noughties Eurodance pop - the beats are a little harder but the melodies are more simplistic than the multi-note anthems of trance. In a way they bridge the gap between the trance-dominated early noughties and the beginnings of EDM urban dance-pop (Guetta/Harris etc) in the late noughties. I always found the Eurodance "revival" of late 2007-mid 2008 fascinating, Basshunter getting a huge #1 (ahead of some woman called Adele) and Cascada, Ultrabeat and most spectacularly Scooter selling tons of albums. It seems forgotten now but looking back it signalled the end of rock/indie's noughties chart domination and a major shift towards the club bangers of the 2010s. And it meant I got to see them all live on stage thanks to Clubland and Hard2Beat's arena tours, which provide brilliant memories of my late teens!

I'll try and (finally) reach the top 10 by the end of this week.

25: DISCLOSURE FEAT. SAM SMITH - LATCH (New Entry) Peak: #11 (November 2012) 93ASUImTedo This was the first song I remember hearing that I thought was definitely, definitely going to be in a future update to my first list. And over two years later it's still sounding great enough to hit the halfway mark. Predating the deep house craze a little this sounded amazingly different to anything else at the time, using all the best bits of late 90s house and garage with fantastic vocals from some bloke called Sam Smith who'd go onto solo mainstream success with a load of songs much worse than this. I assumed 'Disclosure' was someone (or some people) in their 30s and around the same age as Chase & Status, maybe a DJ who'd been around for many years but only just now breaking through. My jaw dropped when learning it were a couple of late teens/young adults who were born after me, and suddenly I felt absolutely ancient!

26: SWEDISH HOUSE MAFIA - ONE (Down 10) Peak: #7 (August 2010) Ij227rjUfkc Poor 2010's suffered in this update, particularly the upbeat dance tracks which have mostly left the chart. 'One' (no 'Your Name' in sight, original instrumental all the way thank you very much) has managed to survive by still retaining its simple but euphoric power almost half a decade on. Back in 2012 I thought this was slightly less good than Miami 2 Ibiza, but today it's this that wins. Their biggest hit in reality belongs to their last and by far their worst ever song, unreleased at the time of the last list. Compared to this it's boring, commercial mainstream blandness, interchangeable from anything else but the kids liked singing "DON'T YOU WORRY DON'T YOU WORRY CHILD" at the school discos so it sold an undeserving ton. JUNE 2016 UPDATE: Wow, I was quite harsh on 'Don't You Worry Child' there!! There is definitely a shift towards less dancey-tracks in this list compared to my 2012 one - it reflected the mood I was in at the time. This is still one hell of a tune though six years on.

27: VANCE JOY - RIPTIDE (New Entry) Peak: #10 (February 2014) uJ_1HMAGb4k Another song that reminds me of Australia, a big 2013 hit over there which eventually peaked at a surprisingly low #10 here at the start of this year (2014). Again in today's connected age they couldn't really delay this until the following summer in a Coco Jamboo sort of way, shame as this doesn't fit the winter months at all and instead conjures up all blue skies and beaches. Plus a bizarre, almost meta video, which features a load of literal imagery and means I've no idea what Vance Joy even looks like.

28: MAGIC - RUDE (New Entry) Peak: #1 (August 2014) PIh2xe4jnpk Quite a recent one but sounded great in the few summery days we had this year (mostly in the Autumn) right up to that heatwave Halloween. Working out its position was a tricky one, it's not really sounding at its best in winter so whether I'm still playing it next summer - and the summer after - will determine if it lasts in this list. It channels the spirit of acts of the past like The Police and contributes something breezy, melodic and, rare for 2014, an *actual proper chorus* instead of just endless riffs on the verses. JUNE 2016 UPDATE: It's now "that summer after" and I still enjoy this, in fact I've barely played it since 2014 so it's lasting better than those I've overplayed since. Shame it's a cloudy grey-sky evening outside though...

29: SHOWTEK FEAT. WE ARE LOUD & SONNY WILSON - BOOYAH (New Entry) Peak: #5 (November 2013) BXgMykZWaWE I wonder if people will look back at the second half of 2013 as a bit of a golden era for dance music? More really great dance tracks got released then compared to any other part of the 2010s I can remember, and this joins Summertime Sadness as one of the ones that have made it here. Mindless, frentic dance music which can't quite decide what genre it wants to be so it throws them all in at once, a dubstep/D&B/electro/techno/deep house fusion. The full mix and the radio edit are fairly differently structured, the radio edit with a completely new beginning (that I probably prefer) but the full mix with lots of extra sections in the middle that don't make the edit - my ideal mix would be the start of the radio edit leading into the rest of the full. Either way it's a track that piles on the energy and majorly throws you on first listen, perhaps too disjointed and heavy for some but in an age where most dance tracks start off promising but lead into disappointing, minimalist deep house "drops" this is hugely refreshing a listen.

...ah. Well. That was kind of a fail :P I've just returned to the UK for a while after spending most of the last year in Australia, and I've found my original notes for this thread I wrote back in early 2015. I never got as far as the full list but I *did* write draft entries up to #11, which is still 19 more places than how far this thread got. My music tastes are always changing and there's already songs in the list that I wouldn't rank so high today, but rather than try and rewrite the whole thing I'm gonna try finishing this off (again) as things stood this time a year and a half ago. Before I get to the top 10, I'll list a few 2015-16 songs that I've enjoyed since. So (if anyone still cares, lol) let's flash back to New Year 2015, and - finally - #29 in my then-Decade top 50!

Out of the Blue is absolutely up there with my fave songs of all time, even more so since Ferry remastered it in 2010 - keeping exactly the same instrumentation and layout but just sonically beefing it up a tad. Was absolutely mindblown when I first heard it around 2004-05.

I always saw the end of the trance "era" as early-mid 2003 - there's a few hits over the next few years but they generally went low top 40 or didn't stay around long. I'd also argue the last true "trance" top 40 hit was Flio & Peri's 'Anthem' in December 2007, which just sneaked in at #39 although the genre had completely lost commercial success by then - oxOrpu5jaLc For me it's by far my favourite dance genre, and despite complaints that half the songs sound the same, I can listen to almost any of them - especially during its 1999-2003 peak - and absolutely adore them. I like to think there'll be a major revival sometime this decade but I've got horrible visions of Tinie Tempah/Pitbull etc rapping over the top of Carte Blanche, so maybe it is best it stays in the past :P