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All in all, it's fair to say it has been a mixed bag of a year. On the one hand, narrowing down a top 15 tracks has been an almost excruciatingly difficult task. On the other hand it's been made considerably easier by dismissing inexorable shit such as this, this and this. Needless to say that LMFAO haven't been on The Pop Web's Christms card list this year (not that we can ever be arsed to write them). All in all, our final fifteen list has had to exclude some tracks/performances which we definitely felt were on the right side of "very good" this year. As a result, we'd like to declare that the following songs are "highly commended" in our esteemed/barely regarded opinion:
Nicki Minaj - Superbass; Mischa B - Would I Lie To You?; Rihanna feat. Drake - What's My Name?; Bruno Mars - Grenade; Emeli Sande - Heaven; Professor Green feat. Emeli Sande - Read All About It; Kelly Clarkson - Mr Know It All; Katy Perry - E.T.; Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks
But enough of the very-good-but-not-quite-good-enough. What about the top 15 precisely nobody has been waiting for? Here it is:
15. Little Mix - You Got The Love
*Annual token X Factor performance alert*
Little Mix well and truly bucked the X Factor trend this year. Starting out as a thrown-together and distinctly ropey ragtag band with a rubbish name, they metamorphosed into an actually-decent group and went on to win the whole thing. The turning point in our mind was the moment where Little Mix Jade said outside their private gig thing "It all looks very posh in there... I think we'll fit right in." in a Geordie accent so heartwarming it made us homesick for a whole week. This performance was in no way their best vocally, but in terms of setting out a mission statement for what this band could be in the future, it was perfect. Filling a stage with enough dancers you could stage a perfectly choreographed military coup is always a good sign in our book. Add to that the motorbikes and the flags (God we want one of those flags), and it was a recipe for a great performance which set out the post-X Factor Little Mix stall very nicely. Syco: do not fuck this one up. We expect a follow-up single by April at the very latest.
14. Leona Lewis/Avicii - Collide
It's a real shame that this single appears to mark the point in Leona Lewis' career where "sale fail" has started to set in. Despite extensive promotion that largely got overshadowed by a row over the Avicii sample underpinning the track, Collide only reached number 4 and spent a mere 5 weeks in the top 40. Which is a shame, because in our opinion it's bloody good. We've pointed out before how the live Leona experience indicated that things wouldn't be too much of a musical disaster if she went the up-tempo route. At least from a commercial point of view, this appears to be a misjudgement. Syco were so worried about this single's performance that they've delayed the Glassheart album and had her chuck out a not-exactly-brilliant EP of rousing covers of Hurt and Iris (because we all know how well that went for Ronan Keating). It's a shame because Collide represents a promising change in direction for Leona. Her voice still sounds amazing (no qualms there) and the Avicii backing track complements her vocal brilliantly. What would be really sad in the aftermath of all of this is for Syco to return to the tried, tested and tired "covering ballads" route rather than press on with a quite exciting reinvention. This track proves that Leona, with her beautiful, astonishing voice, really can sing anything.
13. Coldplay - Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall
COME BACK! We haven't lost out minds. As a general rule our pathological abhorrence of Chris Martin continues unabated. But even we couldn't deny that this opening single from Xylo Myloto is an excellent achievement from a band who have for the past decade and a bit have bored us to tears. Turning their hand to a more dance-orientated track, Martin and co. created a genuinely interesting single which still contains their trademark arena-rock sound but experiments with new instrumentation to draw in a new audience. The guitars take on a peculiarly Celtic vibe over the top of a driving and energetic drumbeat with Martin's characteristic wailing over the top. And it works. It really does. Now if you'll excuse us we're going to retreat into premature middle age weeping over Radio 2 and consoling ourselves with pictures of the fit bassist Guy Berryman.
12. Nicole Scherzinger - Don't Hold Your Breath
We enthused about Nicole's follow up to Poison earlier in the year, but that was before she took on a new career of making pre-pubescent girls cry in front of an audience of millions. But sometimes, pop music is good enough to make you forget about all that and certain tracks still manage to stand the test of time despite the various infractions of their performers. Don't Hold Your Breath is one of those songs. A not-exactly-original lyric about refusing to go back to a rubbish ex is offset by a feisty vocal delivery, and some excellent production. This was a well-deserved number 1 for Nicole.
11. Vanbot - Lost Without You
Another track which we rhapsodised about earlier in the year. Vanbot (a.k.a. Ester Ideskog) burst to our attention with this devastatingly sad ode to that pervasive melancholia which surrounds after a break up. With lyrics tenderly exploring that sense of lost confidence ("I thought I had it under control") and that desperate attempt to keep calm and carry on ("I close my eyes and maybe wounds would heal"), Lost Without You became the perfect soundtrack to our late-Spring/early-Summer, especially in the absence of a new Robyn album. We expect even bigger and better things from Vanbot in 2012.
10. Kelly Clarkson - What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger)
There is truly nobody on the planet better than Kelly Clarkson at delivering a fist-pumping pop-rock hyphen-friendly single. 8 years after Miss Independent, Kelly demonstrated this year that she still had the knack for delivering a feisty shout-along smash. It's perhaps not a surprise that this guitar-driven rockout works so well given it was co-written by Jörgen Elofsson: a man responsible for a few hits you might have heard of. Coming off the back of the quite-good Mr Know It All this has helped Kelly show that in the arse-end of 2011, despite all the rumoured record company fallouts, Kelly still has the ability to pull a great pop song out of the bag when needs must.
9. Britney Spears - Till The World Ends
You're Britney Spears. At one point you were undoubtedly the biggest pop stars on the planet. After a couple of years of questionable personal-life decisions, a bit of a breakdown and some lukewarm commercial reception, what do you do to prove that you still have something to offer now that you're not. that. innocent anymore? Why, you start listening to a shit-load of dubstep, of course. Till The World Ends brought Britney right back to basics after the slightly more experimental Hold It Against Me. Unleashing her trademark purring vocal over an infectious, juddering backing track and pairing it all up with a video which finally showed her choreography coming together after several years in the doldrums, Till The World Ends was the dancefloor-friendly return to form that all of her fans could get behind. It also spawned this quite good mashup with Adele's Rolling In the Deep. So that's two for the price of one. Very good.
8. Lady Gaga - The Edge of Glory
You know, readers, this was one choice we had to really really agonise over. Without a doubt, Born This Way has been a major talking point of our year. All of the tracks on it have ebbed and flowed in terms of the frequency of their iTunes rotation. One day we like Judas best. One day we like Yoü and I best. At the moment, we're quite liking Marry The Night. Whilst it would be a downright lie to say that it was the best album of the year (the quality in parts is distinctly patchy - we're looking at you Americano) it would be ridiculous for us to fail to include one of its tracks on this list. In the end, we've plumped for Edge of Glory (we should state now that we're just ignoring the abominable video that accompanied it - seriously, that thing is awful).
Why? Because for us it's the track that sort of ties the whole thing together in a funny sort of way. As a not-quite-a-ballad-but-getting-there, it shows that Gaga doesn't have to throw a million and one production techniques at the wall to make something stick. As a lyric, it's reflections on hedonism and mortality ("it isn't hell if everybody knows my name tonight") are in equal parts touching and inspiring. It also has a saxophone solo from the recently deceased Clarence Clemons. While we probably have a more personal connection to Yoü and I, Edge of Glory was probably Born This Way's most successful creative achievement. Now Gaga, please, for the love of God. Do the album's tour and take a holiday. There are flashes of genius on this album, but we genuinely worry that they were largely eclipsed by a frenetic creative fatigue which prevented this from becoming the classic it could so easily have been.
7. Example - Changed The Way You Kissed Me
Back in March, we christened this track "the anti-Kickstarts" and also claimed that it would be kind of a big deal. We'd just like to take this opportunity to reflect modestly on how we were absolutely right. Three months later it had spent two weeks at number 1. And deservedly so. The excellent production, coupled with the sinister lyric about the slow death of a relationship blended perfectly with a surprisingly good vocal from Example. The track dripped with venom but didn't lose its commercial, dance sensibilities. It was a winning formula, which we were right about all along. Did we mention that?
6. The Wanted - Glad You Came
You know sometimes when a boy band decide they're going to record a song that is basically designed to drip with sex appeal and it doesn't work at all. And then sometimes it definitely does? This belongs in the latter category. A track which proceeds from the vas deferens more than it does from the heart, The Wanted's musical evocation of a boozy weekend in Magaluf is carried off with some addictively charismatic vocals and one hell of a opening hook. Yes, it's basically what the writers of Zoo magazine would have come up with if given access to a mixing desk and a notepaper to jot some lyrics down (with the exception of the actually quite poetic "The sun goes down/the stars go out" bit), but it's an undeniably catchy and attitude-filled track. Plus, when you're more than a little bit hammered in a club and it comes on, you get the feeling that you could pull anyone with ease. Yes, even him/her. The fit one. By the bar.
We should at this point state that we were in no way influenced by those bits in the video where they took their shirts off. We are serious music critics. Serious.
5. Neon Hitch - Get Over U
We don't actually know how to begin explaining how much we love this track. It's so hard to pin down. It's not just the beautiful lyrics. It's not just the excellent production job. It's not just the heartbreaking vocal which Neon brings to the track. Get Over U is just the perfect example of all the different constituent parts of a song coming together and creating something brilliant. An accomplished video meant that this should have been the start of an extremely successful 2011. And, of course, there's time yet. And even if that's not quite how it pans out, we'll just be happy to have been left with this heartbreaking, nigh-on-perfect pop song.
4. The Saturdays - All Fired Up
Let it be known. 2011 is the year that The Saturdays arrived. Of course since Up they've been on our peripheral vision, and in retrospect it was an absolute crime that we didn't include Higher on our top 15 last year. But once they teamed up with Xenomania (the production team behind this minor Cher hit and pretty much every good Girls Aloud song) it was impossible to overlook them any longer. All Fired Up is a relentless club smash, with an utterly infectious bassline and seductive vocals from the Sats. The hook "blow my mind, DJ, blow my mind" has been in our heads for pretty-much 4 solid months. That this only made it to number 3 on the UK charts is one of our top pop injustices of the year (don't worry, there's more to come on that score).
3. Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris
Speaking of a club smash. Given that Rihanna has released 6 albums in five years, toured them extensively and appeared relentlessly on collaborations, we'd have forgiven her for taking the rest of the year off, crawling into bed and refusing to come out until she was good and ready. Instead, she decided to release this 100% amazing track accompanied by Calvin Harris. Something about the euphoric crescendo on the bridge and Rihanna's beautiful vocal combines to give this track an amazing energy (Copywrite: all of this year's X Factor judges). The result is a track so infectious that it demands attention and is guaranteed to create a standing-room-only club situation. Yet underpinning the dance sensibilities of We Found Love are flashes of lyrical brilliance. From the opening "Yellow diamonds in the light" to the brilliantly touching "turn away cause I need you more" everything about this track contains a sense of euphoria and intoxication which makes it so damned irresistable.
2. Nicola Roberts - Beat Of My Drum
Having sat by and watch the rest of her Girls Aloud bandmates try their hands more-or-less successfully at media and solo careers during their so-called hiatus, 2011 saw Nicola Roberts throw her hat into the ring. Drawing upon a reservoir of personal experience and (sadly) abuse received during her time in the spotlight, the result was the stunning album Cinderella's Eyes. This, the lead single from the album, was a feat of genius in itself. Getting on board producer Diplo to create a chaotic backing track, Nicola's understated vocal on the verses gives way to expressive yearning tones on the bridge before bursting into the defiant and infectious "L-O-V-E, dance to the beat of my drum" of the chorus. The result is, in our opinion, a more likeable and successful track than this year's other big Diplo production: Beyonce's Run The World (Girls). Yes readers, your eyes don't deceive you. We've just ranked Nicola Roberts higher than Beyonce.
But all that high praise can't correct this year's biggest pop injustice in our eyes. Beat Of My Drum reached no higher than 28 on the singles chart, and the excellent album it was taken from only reached number 17. What the hell, British record-buying public? What the hell?
"There's a fire starting in my heart..."
There is absolutely zero critical kudos to be gained by stating that 2011 was the year of Adele. It's fucking obvious. The album 21 has to date sold more than 13 million copies so far. It remained number one for 18 weeks (over a third of the year). The single Someone Like You has been by far the biggest selling single of the year, largely off the back of a single Brits performance. Yet for our money, it is the album's lead single, Rolling In The Deep which is most deserving of the title of "our favourite song of the year".
From the moment that the Eye Of The Tiger-esque bass kicks in and Adele's snarling vocal kicks in, everything about this track screams "hit". The vocals have a real blues sensibility, with the backing vocalists giving a really haunting feel to the track in the middle-eight with their ethereal "You're gonna wish you - never had met me", all the while being propelled along by a relentless pulsating backing track. And yet, throughout, Adele's heartbreaking vocal shines through. Oscillating from the defiant "Finally, I can see you crystal clear/ Go ahead and sell you out and I'll lay your shit bare" to the mournful "we could have had it all", Adele belts out these lyrics and her belief in them shines through. The chorus of the track ranks up there with one of the most anthemic of all time. Not least because it is clear from her tortured vocal that she means every single word.
In our opinion, great emotional pop music can make you dance or cry. Truly amazing music can make you do both at the same time. Through this year, we've done our share of both, and Rolling In The Deep has been a constant refrain through it. It will continue to be so for some time to come.
