Commercially, the year belonged to the reunited and newly-electro Black Eyed Peas, who dominated the singles charts, breaking records and sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 for 16 consecutive weeks with these two classics (three more top tens off the double-platinum THE E.N.D. would follow):
Critically, the year belonged to Animal Collective, the Dirty Projectors and The xx, whose magnum opuses - Merriweather Post Pavilion, Bitte Orca and xx respectively - were received to widespread acclaim and rave reviews from respected publications.
Sunshine State lunkheads Flo Rida and Pitbull were still fairly innocuous, scoring top three singles we bopped two secretly, not knowing we'd eventually hate them...
'09 introduced to the non-mixtape masses to the reigning king and queen of contemporary hip-hop in Young Money's Drake and Nicki Minaj...
...and to dirty girl Ke$ha, who rose from Nashville obscurity with 'Simpsons' onetime-theme song "Dolla""P. Diddy" and worldwide SMASH "Tik Tok"...
...none of which has anything to do with fellow Nashville girl and Disney darling, Miley Cyrus, who would never again be as huge as she was with this song and would never, EVER, sully her image like the girl before her, perishthethought...
The US of A got its UK exports (great ones, too!) in a timely manner. No waiting for the next year for some rubbish remix...
Shakira and J. Lo ventured outside the box, with, uh, differing but welcome results...
R&B still sounded like R&B thanks to solid works by The-Dream and Maxwell...
Ciara and Keri Hilson got their last (in both senses of the word ) top tens then!...
Rap crew second-stringers Kid Cudi and Wale aimed for the mainstream spotlight (#3...#99) ...
America's first Idol Kelly Clarkson shot back to the top of the charts after a flop-esque third album...
And America's last sizable crossover rock hit was, ironically, by Muse, three Englishmen...
The millennials got their first - and **** it, best - party anthem in LMFAO's "Shots"...
And we got the most recent efforts by our favorite big-voiced divas...
...and career-capping (lbr) retrospective compilations by Madge & 'Mita...
...and the song about the Big Apple that would take over the world, and annoy the ever-loving **** out of us...
Of course, 2009 wasn't without scandal: while Kanye West did pull the stunt that would go on to be the (first?) biggest meme known to man...
...little did he know he'd be introducing us to our new country sweetheart, inadvertently introducing the world and broadening audiences for one Taylor Swift....
And Rihanna.
What happened to Rihanna?
Right!
Silly me.
Our so-called Trinity had relatively quiet years, what with Britney Spears on a successful world tour...
...and Beyoncé on a successful world tour in the same year AND logging two top ten hits...
and....uh...YEAH!
Good times.
Oh.
And while we may have lost The King of Pop in '09, an unassuming then(?) also-ran by the name of Katy Perry was waiting in the wings, ready to nab the first in what would be a string of TEN consecutive top ten smashes...
) top tens then!...
Katy Perry
gaga, Taylor, Kesha, Miley, BEP that year >>>>>>>>>
