The beat of this track is so punchy it gave Rihanna worse bruises than Chris Brown’s fists. *ba-dum-zing* But seriously, I love how crispness of the kick and the clap on this track. They burst through every other element of the track and really give the whole song a pumping drive that helps to set it apart from the 500 other songs released this year that are essentially the same song but suffer from weaker production. “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love” could never. But aside from the fact that I find the production value of this track quite nice, I just think it’s a generally enjoyable dance pop track that kicks the good time vibes into overdrive, and if we’re being entirely truthful, if people weren’t still butthurt (I’m maybe still a little butthurt about it) over Beat ‘em Down Brown’s little outburst on a certain Bajan beauty or had said incident not happened this song would have had comparable success to Chris’s other dance pop smashes, so get out of here with you “this song’s just not that good” claims. Oh, and can Chris straggling fans stop bitching anytime he records a sprightly pop song in favor of some inferior “urban smash” like “Deuces” which was only relatively successful by happy accident. If Breezy wants success ala 2008 (which might likely never happen, but you can’t blame him for still craving it and wanting to recapture that glory), “Yeah 3X” is the way to go.
The Best Bit: The beat. Also I love the “All the pretty young things at the party, let me see your hands up! And if they mad and they don’t wanna party, tell them shut the **** up!” bit.
15. Kylie Minogue All the Lovers
The brilliance of Kylie hit me in a big way in 2010. I’ve always been what I would call a casual fan, but tracks like “All the Lovers” and the perfection of Aphrodite have really inspired me to go back through her discography and fill in gaps where I may have overlooked the greatness of a certain song or lost track of her. What realizations did I come to in doing this? Well, basically, all of Kylie’s music is amazing and I can say with confidence that she has one of the most perfect pop voices of all time. She’s a truly beautiful woman with a surprisingly emotive voice and a discography that’s rich with quality gems. My opinion of this classy gal couldn’t be any more positive. So now that I’ve gushed about the genius herself, I should probably gush a little bit about the song. I guess I would describe it as one part call to the dancefloor, one part extended compliment to a current beau. It’s a mature disco number that I can’t actually ever imagine myself dancing to in any capacity, but it’s an enticing listen that’s made fantastic by a sweet (yet not overly cheesy) sentiment and Kylie’s ever-captivating baby doll vocals.
The Best Bit: Listen to everything from 2:10 – 2:25 and tell me you don’t get chills.
14. Freemasons Believer (feat. Wynter Gordon)
When they’re not busy remixing the hot messes of Kelly Rowland, Beyonce and Solange in order to make them listenable, the Freemasons can usually be found releasing their own top quality commercial house singles featuring the talents of many an underrated female vocalist. On “Believer”, Wynter Gordon delivers a hypnotically beautiful vocal performance, made only more mesmerizing by an accompanying lush soundscape compliments of one of the UK’s most underrated production teams. Thick layers of reverb surround every element of the track, yet no aspect is lost in the mix or is muddied up by the echoy nature of it all. It sounds as though special attention was given to ensure that the best feature of the track, Wynter’s vocals, are always at the forefront of the track. Her talents on this track alone suggest she has the potential for greatness, yet her talents are squandered on relatively anonymous and underappreciated dance anthems such as this one. I have to wonder when/if she’ll be able to cash in on the positive industry buzz surrounding her. And can we talk for two seconds about how ****ing beautiful she is? Like, drop dead gorgeous. This video is nothing but the standard lights and colors and costumes in front of a blank wall concept that makes up 99% of all low budget commercial house music videos, but I find myself watching it at least once every couple days just to get a glimpse of Ms. Gordon. I particularly love the way she looks in the black outfit with the retarded hat.
The Best Bit: Every second. Listen to this once and tell me you won’t walk around the house singing “Ooh-oh-woah-oh-oooh, I’m a believeeeeer!” for the next 3 weeks.
Your writeup on Indestructible just made aware of all a quite major GRAMMATICAL ERROR in the lyrics and the song has therefore been ruined for me forever. Thank you sir. For dramatic effect, let us assume I have a Robyn collection that I will now proceed to burn.
Your writeup on Indestructible just made aware of all a quite major GRAMMATICAL ERROR in the lyrics and the song has therefore been ruined for me forever. Thank you sir. For dramatic effect, let us assume I have a Robyn collection that I will now proceed to burn.
I am so sorry for ruining Robyn for you.
I hope you didn't examine anything I've written in this thread very closely for grammatical errors. You would hate me for life.
Her name is Keri, she’s so very, fly oh my, it’s a little bit scary. Boys wanna marry, lookin’ at her derrie-erre, you can stare, but if you touch it she’a bury. Pretty as a picture, sweeter than a swisher, mad cause she’s cuter than the girl that’s with ya. She ain’t gotta talk about it, baby you can see it, but if you want she’ll be happy to repeat it. Her name is Keri, she’s so very, fly oh my, it’s a little bit scary. Boys wanna marry, lookin’ at her derrie-erre, you can stare, but if you touch it she’a bury. Pretty as a picture, sweeter than a swisher, mad cause she’s cuter than the girl that’s with ya. She can talk about it cause she knows that she’s pretty, and if you know it too then ATRL **** sing it with her. But seriously, don’t hate her cause she’s beautiful, or because she shaded your fave a long ass time ago and you’re too easily butthurt, or because her anthem of female empowerment is better than your fave’s anthem of female empowerment, or because her writing credits actually belong to her, or because you’re too insecure to allow more than two successful black female singers to exist at any given time. Don’t hate her for any of those reasons. Accept one of the best tracks of 2010, the number #13 single on this list, “Pretty Girl Rock”.
The Best Bit: Everything.
12. Wynter Gordon Dirty Talk
Just two spots above her track with house music masterminds the Freemasons, Wynter Gordon makes her second appearance on this countdown with her fantastic solo single, “Dirty Talk”, a fantastic flop that has been wasted on a generation of dance pop enthusiasts with a preference for inferior songs. I could excuse this flop ****ery if the only amazing thing this song had going for itself was the phrase “Cherry pop, tag team. Can you make me scream?” but as utterly brilliant as those words are, they don’t even scratch the surface of this track’s incredible wealth of amazingness, and therefore there’s no excuse for this tracks floppage. Ok, I can think of maybe one or two excuses for this track’s floppage, like the fact that Wynter’s label gave her a budget of about $3.50 for video and promotional purposes, and that they actually let Wynter go ahead with planned fairytale themed video. It’s called you put her in a sexy leotard and place her in front of a blank wall and turn on a strobe light. Voilà! Instantly classic pop video delivered. Better yet, you up her in kitten heels, lingere, pantyhose and you show her engaging in foreplay along with some scenes of legs up on the bar, a scene or two in the back of your car, and throw in some props consisting of latex, champagne, bubblebath and whipped cream. The lyrics spell it all out. They've attempted to rectify the situation by giving her a new video (featured above) but it's a bit too little too late.
The Best Bit: The bit that starts at 2:25 is amazing. Talk to me. Talk to me. Talk dirty to me. Talk dirty to me. Won’t you talk to me? Talk to me. Talk dirty to me. Talk dirty-dirty-dirty-dirty-dirty-dirty-dirty-dirty.
11. Ke$ha Blah Blah Blah
I view this track as both a curse and a blessing for Ke$ha. For all of its brilliant wordplay and undeniable personality, I also think it’s the track that cemented Ke$ha’s she-can-offer-nothing-of-substance-cause-she’s-nothing-but-a-party-girl status. In the world of pop music, personalities have no duality. The girl who debuts as a **** is forever a **** and couldn’t possibly have a side of herself that’s decidedly more reserved. The girl who mimes is forever talentless in every aspect. The girl who plays dumb is dumb. The girl who labels herself an artist is forever worthy of critical praise and is always thinking just a little bit harder than the other girls. “Tik Tok” planted the idea in our heads that Ke$ha is pop music’s trashy response to more polished acts, “Blah Blah Blah” confirmed it, and from here on out she’s the potty mouthed, garbage bin dwelling, alcoholic girl who’s completely incapable of offering music that displays any sort of maturity or emotional awareness. It’s fine, I like that aspect of Ke$ha’s persona, but this potty mouthed, garbage bin dwelling, alcoholic character is in fact only one facet of a more complex individual who’s part wild child, part carefree spirit, part driven individual, part fragile young woman, part ballsy tough chick, part a million other things. If you were to really examine her work, you would realize she uses all of these characteristics to inspire different areas of her work. You didn’t know this? You haven’t listened to anything but the singles. But yeah, I love “Blah Blah Blah” and I think it’s fantastic aside from the unnecessary 3OH!3 appearance that kills the flow of the whole thing.
The Best Bit: Ke$ha’s quips are everything. “Come put a little love in my glovebox.”
Rated R has everything. Songs of heartbreak? How about some of the best songs of heartbreak performed by any mainstream artist in recent memory. Booty jams? See: RudeBoy. Bits of boastfulness and unconfirmed self-importance? You bet. Along with “Hard”, the #10 entry on this countdown, “Rockstar 101” falls into this last category. Rihanna’s pop star, not rock star, but with a song as bad ass as this one and a singer that can be as convincingly bad ass as Ms. Fenty the track manages to work. It doesn’t really matter that she’s never smashed a guitar or had a hardcore drug problem cause she has an edgy haircut, gives a mean middle finger and sounds like a complete natural telling you to frisk her good and demanding that you check her panties and bra. The track does nothing but clarify that Rihanna is in fact amazing (as if you didn’t already know), but it’s hard to fault the song for not painting some grand emotional picture or giving us any sort of story. The attitude everything, and “Rockstar 101” has attitude in spades. If I were a ballsier, douchier, more confident sort of person this would be my personal anthem (it might also work better for me if I were female), but I’ll settle for living a life of sleeping all day and staying out all night vicariously through Rihanna. If her swagger weren’t enough, the production is certainly of such a high quality that you would be drawn into the intoxicating web of this song. With a few grungy guitar lines courtesy of Slash and an unexpectedly simply beat, the production quality of this track is not only top notch, but also ridiculously effective.
The Best Bit: Two bits stand out as being particularly amazing, and for what it’s worth, they could easily be worked into your everyday conversations. Numero Uno: “Got middle finger up, I don’t really give a ****”. Numero Dos: “Make sure you frisk me good, check my panties and my bra.”
9. Katy Perry California Gurls (feat. Snoop Dogg)
I’m a bit bipolar in my attitude towards Katy Perry. I have at times branded her a gimmicky singer and chastised her for employing pseudo-lesbianism as a proper career launcher, yet if any of my favorite performers were to do it (say a Madonna/Britney liplock) I would absolutely love it. At other times I’m all up in her coochie and praising everything she does. My reaction to “California Gurls” was one of those mixed bags of emotions. At first I was all: Look at the little girl with no talents of her own to succeed on running off to Dr. Luke for a little bit of that Ke$ha magic. Then I was all: This is an amazingly crafty pop song that isn’t inherently Ke$ha-esque because it doesn’t have an entirely synthetic Ke$ha sound. I love it! And then it was everywhere, and they started playing it on repeat at my job, and I couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing it, and the video was everywhere (either as a clip on something or being shown in its entirety), and I going into a bit of a diabetic coma due to all the sugary sweetness of “California Gurls” being in my system. Months later I’m able to appreciate the track as the wonderfully bubbly pop gem that it is. I’m feeling objective enough to award it (and one other Katy song) a spot on this countdown, despite the fact that I’m likely to go off meds and hate her again and declare everything she does a travesty in about a week or so.
The Best Bit: All of it. It’s just fun summery pop music at its best. Snoop Dogg’s verse is one of the few rap features I’ve ever bothered to learn word for word, so I suppose I think he has one of the best bits of the track. The video, too. I love the video.
9. Alex Gaudino I'm in Love (I Wanna Do It)
What do you do when you have a song that would perfectly suited for Rihanna’s vocals but you’re only really reputable in the dance music community and thus you could never actually get a famous pop vocalist like Rihanna to appear on said track cause, let’s face it, you’ll lose out to David Guetta every time in terms of name recognition? You hire an equally anonymous singer (who for some reason agrees to appear without a credit in the title) with a voice that is slightly reminiscent of Rihanna’s to provide the desired vocals and create the underrated commercial house/dance/pop track at #8 on this countdown, Alex Guadino’s “I’m in Love (I Wanna Do It)”. I don’t actually know if said dilemma actually occurred, but the whole we’re going for a Rihanna angle with this idea doesn’t seem entirely implausible when that first “hey-ey-ey, oooh-oh-oh” comes out of Anonymous Vocalist’s mouth. Anyway, this is a great little track that I assume from its chart position did decently well in the UK and would possibly do well in the American market given our current obsession with songs of a similar nature. Do I see that actually happening, though? No, and perhaps that’s for the best because the elitist in me likes to think I’m onto something special when I get into a track that has only had success in outside territories.
The Best Bit: I really like the background “I’m in love. I’m in love. I’m in love. I’m in love. I’m in love. I’m in love. I wanna do it!” chant that fades in and out of the track at various times via filter. Also, the little piano melody is cute and something I like to pluck out every time I walk past a piano.
I discover her so late last year 
She'll rule this year for sure 
It’s called you put her in a sexy leotard and place her in front of a blank wall and turn on a strobe light. Voilà! Instantly classic pop video delivered. Better yet, you up her in kitten heels, lingere, pantyhose and you show her engaging in foreplay along with some scenes of legs up on the bar, a scene or two in the back of your car, and throw in some props consisting of latex, champagne, bubblebath and whipped cream. The lyrics spell it all out. They've attempted to rectify the situation by giving her a new video (featured above) but it's a bit too little too late.
