1. Britney Spears, "How I Roll"
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.
11. Rihanna, "We Found Love" - "We found love in a hopeless place" is a great disco hook, especially since places don't get much hopelesser than Rihanna's larynx."
11. Rihanna, "We Found Love"
"We found love in a hopeless place" is a great disco hook, especially since places don't get much hopelesser than Rihanna's larynx.