Member Since: 7/9/2010
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Rolling Stone's Top 25 Pop Songs of 2011
1. Britney Spears, "How I Roll"
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Britney hooks up with the Swedish production duo Bloodshy and Avant, who also gave her "Toxic" in 2004 and "Piece of Me" in 2007, and like the first two chapters of the trilogy, it's fiendishly inventive girl noise. Every sound effect that jumps out of the mix – Brit slurring the word "speakerrrr," digital finger-snaps, a real beatbox pretending to be a human beatbox – builds the tension. There's even a plot: An ordinary girl sits in her lonely room, dreaming of party lights far away, wishing she could escape to a place where she can show her kneesocks and drink tequila on the rocks, where there's music and there's people and they're young and alive. But the mean old world won't let her break free, so she just sings along with the machines until she turns into a machine herself, because only the beat understands her. There's your story of pop music right there.
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2. Big Sean featuring Nicki Minaj, "Dance (A$$) (Remix)"
3. Beyoncé, "Countdown"
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One of the billions of things I love about Beyoncé: The harder she tries to come on crazy, the less crazy she sounds. She might be the most aggressively sane pop diva ever, even when she's boofing her boof boof. And I love how her ticking clock-of-the-heart countdown tweaks Jay-Z's long-ago playa boast, "Do It Again." Remember that one? "5 a.m. now we at my house / 6 a.m. I be diggin' her out / 6:15 I be kickin' her out." That song must be a big Beyoncé fave. But those were different times, and this is definitely B's countdown.
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4. EMA, "California"
5. Bon Iver, "Beth/Rest"
6. Jay-Z and Kanye West featuring Frank Ocean, "No Church In The Wild"
7. Pistol Annies, "Hell on Heels"
8. Rebecca Black, "Friday"
9. Nicki Minaj, "Super Bass"
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Nicki spends 3:19 talking an American guy (she's into those! lucky us!) into her car, which is 3 minutes and 18 seconds longer than she would ever need, but she just likes to hear herself talk, and so do the rest of us. At first I missed the Slick Rick joke – when Nicki says, "You're like slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye," I thought she meant Bushwick Bill. But Nicki's so brazen, she would try to pick up dudes by comparing them to Bushwick Bill. And in her case, it would probably work. The way she savors the line "I can tell that you're in touch with your feminine side" is like an 11-word tutorial on what it means to be pelican fly.
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10. Stevie Nicks, "Annabel Lee"
11. Rihanna, "We Found Love"
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"We found love in a hopeless place" is a great disco hook, especially since places don't get much hopelesser than Rihanna's larynx. This is the first Rihanna hit that sounds like it was written specifically for her to sing, which might be why it's her best by a mile. While her other hits tried to camouflage her spindly voice, here it just strains for that spindly melody. A bigger voice would spoil it, just as you probably will at the karaoke joint.
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12. Destroyer, "Kaputt"
13. Azealia Banks, "212"
14. Kurt Vile, "Runner Ups"
15. Adele, "Rolling in the Deep"
16. Radiohead, "Separator"
17. Neon Indian, "Fallout"
18. Thurston Moore, "Mina Loy"
19. The Horrors, "Still Life"
20. Xeno and Oaklander, "Sets and Lights"
21. Paul Simon, "Rewrite"
22. Avril Lavigne, "What the Hell"
23. Yuck, "Get Away"
24. Nicki Minaj, "Girlfriend"
25. Lady Gaga, "Edge of Glory"
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Gaga demonstrates she knows what it means to steal, to cheat, to lie, while Clarence Clemons proves it all night. R.I.P., Big Man.
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http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/...-2011-20111221
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