Bubbling Under Chart: #55-51 "Didn't we almost have it all?" Well, no, you didn't even land somewhere in the middle of the main chart.
#55Erasure - When I Start To (Break It All Down)
When I start to break it all down, I still haven’t a clue what Andy Bell and Vince Clarke are talking about. This is a track that coasts through on style – never attempting to offer insight beyond a string of vague, hindsight-is-20/20, platitudes. It’s not that I really look for lyrical significance in most of the music I listen to, but I find it a bit insulting that they expect me to accept this half story as some sort of exercise in profundity. Insulted as I may be, I enjoy the track none-the-less. It reeks of Frankmusikian influence, and that’s the very best thing this particular song can offer. A very skillful producer, Vincent Frank manages to accommodate Bell’s strained vocal and provides a perfect update to the duo’s synth-laden sound.
The Best Bit: Frankmusik’s production.
#54The Saturdays - Notorious
Otherwise known as “Three Amazons and a Hobbit Try to Convince Us That They Have Personality”. The Saturdays are very pleasant young women (except for the long-lost 8th dwarf, Vanessa White – she’s rather annoying), but very little can be said about their personality as a group, or respective personalities as individuals. Whereas the members of a superior girl group might make an effort to adopt some sort of platform (empowering women is the only option), or at the very least foster some sort of harmonious identity (sexy chicks or bad girls are the best options), The Saturdays just exist. They’ve managed to release 3.5 albums in 3 years, and still I haven’t a clue what these girls represent. I suppose “Notorious” is an attempt to rectify that problem. “I’m an outlaw. I’m the big boss. I’m a ganster, on the dancefloor,” they boast, but this bad-ass, party girl, persona seems a bit forced when one considers the fact that they’ve previously made no reference to this supposed badassery. The Sats must have embarked on some rebellious, week-long, self-discovery period, during which they ate their beans and toast with a bit of scrambled egg, or something really crazy like that. All that said, “Notorious” is one of their best offerings to date. It’s a hard-hitting soundscape of stomping beats, thick synths and deliciously processed vocals that builds just a little with each successive verse.
The Best Bit: The background ooo-ooo-ooooooo-ooooooohs.
#53Avril Lavigne - What the Hell
She’s a yodeling cheerleader, a sassy teenager trapped in the body of a sexualized twentysomething, and therefore a lot of people in Japan would say she’s the BIGGEST. THING. EVER. It’s true that emanuelpunk is the only person you will encounter in all of your Internet travels who will openly admit to enjoying Avril’s music, but he shouldn’t be a target of our scorn because he’s willing to reveal such a shameful secret. You love this song. I love this song. Jenna Rose and her slumber party BFFs most definitely love this song. And everybody else is insignificant.
The Best Bit: “I-I-I-I-I-I’m saying what the hell!”
#52Armin van Buuren - Drowning (feat. Laura V)
Armin has all but abandoned his trance music roots. I can’t say I blame him – all the big names in the trance scene are doing the same, but this wave of soulless trouse (trance-house) that’s overtaken the genre is a bit disappointing for us traditionalist trance fans. House music sells, and Armin has become excessively commercial in his old age, but there are elements at work in this particular track which seem to reference the mother genre. In particular, the vocal performance of this mysterious Laura V character is very reminiscent of something that might have been featured in an old System F tune.
The Best Bit:Avicii's remix. That's the real reason I'm even mentioning this track.
#51JoJo - Disaster
So, you decided to name your highly-anticipated (by no one in particular) comeback single “Disaster”? Why test the fates like that?
The Best Bit: All of it! This would have been the perfect follow-up single (sorry "How to Touch a Girl" - I do love you) to 2006’s “Too Little, Too Late”. Too late indeed.
70. Avicii - Fade Into Darkness
64. Natalia Kills - Wonderland
60. Dev - In the Dark
57. Rihanna - You Da One
56. Frankmusik - No I.D. (feat. Colette Carr
53. Avril Lavigne - What the Hell
Good start!
Now finish this list up! I really liked your 2010 list as well
British up-and-comer (I don’t think she’ll happen), Jade Williams, otherwise known as Sunday Girl, gives this early 90s classic the twenty-tens treatment, offering up a perfectly pleasant, shimmery, club-ready update. Williams lacks the distinctive vocal stylings of Sunscreem’s Lucia Holm, and while her rendition of the group’s biggest hit may be a bit too milquetoast, she manages to produce the best bowdlerized version of this frequently covered number that I’ve come across. (Followed closely, of course, by Rollergirl’s bubblegummy-Eurotrancey rendition. Sick skates!) Once rid of those pesky references to incestuous rape, pop chanteuses from across the globe are free to put their own spin on this conceptually absurd tune. “Let the sky fall down. Let the leaves turn brown. Still, you know you could never make me love you more. Let the right words die. Let the wells run dry. Still, you know you could never make me love you more.” Yeah, no **** – I have absolutely no respect, much less love, for anyone capable of causing so much chaos and disaster.
The Best Bit: Everything from 2:17 and on is perfect. The track really kicks into overdrive following the break, culminating in this really perfect conclusion.
#50Alexandra Stan - 1.000.000 (feat. Carlprit)
She’s back! This isn’t so much a song as it is an endlessly looping, senseless, celebration of numbers, or love (?), or accents, or something. I can’t quite figure it out. Carlprit seems quite infatuated – even referring to Ms. Stan as his one in a million. Alexandra is decidedly less enthused. “Cuz love can bring you down. Oh no, oh no. Every time you come around, oh no, million-million. Cuz love can bring you down in a way I can’t explain. Yeah, love can bring you down. I know for sure.” She saying absolutely nothing at all, yet in a roundabout way she manages to completely rebuff all of Carlprit’s romanticism. That heartless bitch! The intention, one suspects, was for Alexandra to build off of Carlprit’s tender-hearted rhymes (not 30 seconds later she proclaims that she’d be lonely without him), but ESL difficulties intervened in the most spectacular way and imbued this track a fantastic sense of drama. So much conflict! This may in fact be a freestyle. There’s really nothing cooler than freestyling, so I’m more than justified in enjoying this tune to the extent that I do. Do yourself a favor and listen to this one. You won’t regret it (until you regret it).
Sidenote: I like this idea that in Germany there exists a variety of rappers with names like Carlprit, or Torsten, or Dieter.
The Best Bit: “Milli-million, milli-million, milli-milli-milli-milli-milli-million.” Good luck getting it out of your head!
#49Rihanna - S&M
I like it-like it.
The Best Bit: “I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it. Sex in the air, I don’t care, I love the smell of it. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me.” That’s perfect. That’s really perfect.
#48Lady Gaga - Marry the Night
Oh, hi there. My name is Lady Gaga. I don’t know how to leave well-enough alone. I ruin perfectly good, sieze-the-moment-and-live-your-life, night-on-the-town, dance tunes with overly conceptualized and wearisome video treatments.
The Best Bit: “Won’t poke holes in the seat with my heels cause that’s where we make love.” And the ending is pretty amazing, as abrupt and unnecessary as it seemed for the first ten times I listened to the song.
#47Example - Changed the Way You Kiss Me
Such a wonderful **** tease! Explosive instrumental breaks fall between these wonderfully melodic segments consisting of an infectious synth riff and (surprisingly) on-point vocals from Example himself, Elliot Gleave. The track never delivers what the listener craves most; some sort of payoff in the form of a prolonged chorus. It’s perfect in its determination to defy convention. Reminds me, in many ways, of the sort of tunes I listened to during the tech-trance boom of the mid 00s.
The Best Bit: “We used to be so-so-soulful, Al Green on the background vocals.”
#46Sky Ferreira - Sex Rules
Much as Katy Perry might protest it, the fine art of meshing sex and religion is the must-have, go-to shtick for a genre that desperately wants to be provocative. The idea that people would even consider mixing God into matters of sexuality is offensive to some, but I think the right for one to complain is forfeited when one’s God has a pretty absurd preoccupation with sex, the condemnation of certain sexual acts, and the glorification of others. He/She is just begging to be involved in any number of heathenish acts by sinful entertainers. So, like it or not, God has everything to do with a popstar who performs lewd acts with a rosary, because God creates the taboo. And really, who doesn’t love a good sacrilegious act? Sacrilege is, as far as I’m concerned, always entertaining, and it plays such an important role in our culture. Something else that’s also very entertaining and important? Wordplay. Take, for example, Sky Ferreira’s “Sex Rules”, in which the glorification of sex doubles as a set of guidelines for the act of making love. Sky enthusiastically reminds us that, not only does sex rule, but one should, as a rule, use one’s "God-given tools," and give it one’s all when in the bedroom. It works.
The Best Bit: Greg Kurstin’s 80s-tinged production. It’s not in the same league as his wonderfully bombastic collaboration with Ferreira on “99 Tears” (should have been a single, or promo single, or whatever it is that Sky releases), but it’s delightfully quirky and demonstrates just as much ingenuity.
Trust me, I don't. I like that JoJo song WAY more.
Liar.
Quote:
Originally posted by supaspaz
Oh man, I am LOVING this JoJo song like it's the mid-aughties again! When did it even come out? Because it seriously must have made ZERO impact.
RIGHT?! It came out like, forever ago and it was, for the longest time, just lying dormant with nobody paying any attention to it. Cut to, like, last week and it starts gaining some steam and manages to chart on Mainstream Top 40. I hope it continues to build. She deserves another hit, even if it's just a very moderate one.
Quote:
Originally posted by AshleeSimpsonFan
2/5
Drowning it was my #3 of my best of I love it! You're the first person I see that like this song on ATRL
I'm happy Armin is getting some love from other members! I have a feeling we'll have a lot of the same house/trance/dance songs on our lists.
Quote:
Originally posted by thegmangrant
Let me catch up:
Good start!
Now finish this list up! I really liked your 2010 list as well
The intention, one suspects, was for Alexandra to build off of Carlprit’s tender-hearted rhymes (not 30 seconds later she proclaims that she’d be lonely without him), but ESL difficulties intervened in the most spectacular way and imbued this track a fantastic sense of drama. So much conflict!
Ha ha ha! I could not ask for for a better sales pitch for a song. You made me need to listen to it IMMEDIATELY. Too bad it's kind of terrible (in that but-it-probably-sounds-really-good-when-you're-drunk sort of way).