Top 95 Singles, 2010
Presumably if somehow Ke$ha and I are talking at a party, she realizes that I don't come without chitchat, so the admonition "Don't be a little bitch with your chitchat" isn't in play. Or if it's in play, it's in play as an energy force, without regard to the particular meanings of the particular words. She's got a gale force to match my own gale, and her wind seems ultimately benign, even if I'm not her type. And yeah, some people'll die brushing their teeth with jack - Ke$ha maybe being the gateway that lets them latch onto the dissolution-as-heroism thing in order to rationalize their own turning of the lights out. And other people will be saved, her body and tattered demeanor and raggy voice validating their own bodies and ragged looks and blistered throats. It's not necessary or possible to count up the bodies and see if it "evens out" - they're all part of a gestalt, air currents and countercurrents. And if you want a different party, you better make your party a better party.
I don't think you get her full-force without Benny Blanco. I imagine him in conversation with Luke and the others, or just leading by example, showing that you don't get force from volume, you get it from propulsion. Benny, the man who saved Luke. Superball beats, a coiled spring let loose that carries all the other sounds with it, in Ke$ha's case unexpected prettiness; bright tunes in a tumultuous night.
1. Ke$ha ft. 3OH!3 "Blah Blah Blah"
2. Selena Gomez & the Scene "Naturally"
3. Roach Gigz "Pop Off"
4. Jenni Vartiainen "En Haluu Kuolla Tänä Yönä"
5. Lil Wayne ft. Eminem "Drop The World"
6. DJ Sbu "Vuvuzela Bafana"
7. Little Big Town "Little White Church"
8. Girl Unit "Wut"
9. After School "Bang!"
10. I Blåme Coco ft. Robyn "Caesar"
11. Didi Benami "Play With Fire"
12. Dizzee Rascal & Florence + The Machine "You Got The Dirtee Love"
13. M.I.A. "Born Free"
14. Intocable "Estamos en Algo"
15. E.via "Pick Up! U!"
16. E.via "Shake!"
17. 2NE1 "Try To Follow Me"
18. Far East Movement ft. The Cataracs and Dev "Like A G6"
19. Rihanna "Te Amo"
20. Didi Benami "Rhiannon"
21. Wiley & Chew Fu "Take That"
22. Sunny Sweeney "From A Table Away"
23. Hurts "Wonderful Life"
24. Ke$ha vs. L'Trimm "I Am Cannonball (Boom)(Bedbugs Mix)"
25. Professor Green ft. Lily Allen "Just Be Good To Green"
26. DJ DOC "I'm A Guy Like This"
27. Dizzee Rascal "Dirtee Disco"
28. Heidi Montag "Superficial"
29. Katie Melua "The Flood"
30. Ke$ha "We R Who We R"
31. Sophie Ellis-Bextor "Bittersweet"
32. Gil Scott-Heron "Me And The Devil"
33. GD&TOP "High High"
34. Pitbull ft. T-Pain "Hey Baby (Drop It To The Floor)"
35. Girl's Day "Nothing Lasts Forever"
36. Jeremih ft. 50 Cent "Down On Me"
37. Colette Carr "Back It Up"
38. 3OH!3 "Double Vision"
39. Miss A "Breathe"
40. Rainbow "A"
41. Lee Hyori "Swing"
42. Tinie Tempah "Pass Out"
43. Taylor Swift "Mean"
44. Diddy - Dirty Money "Coming Home"
45. IU "Good Day"
46. Marina And The Diamonds "Hollywood"
47. 2NE1 "Can't Nobody"
48. Rocket From The Tombs "I Sell Soul"
49. Marina And The Diamonds "I Am Not A Robot"
50. Martina McBride "Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong"
51. Sidney Samson "Riverside"
52. DJ DOC "Together (Remix)"
53. Jessie J. "Do It Like A Dude"
54. Sade "Soldier Of Love"
55. Ga-In "Irreversible"
56. Wiley ft. Emili Sandé "Never Be Your Woman"
57. Kelly Rowland ft. David Guetta "Commander"
58. SNSD "Oh!"
59. Aggro Santos ft. Kimberly Wyatt "Candy"
60. Laura Bell Bundy "Giddy On Up"
61. Taylor Swift "Speak Now"
62. Plan B "She Said"
63. The-Dream ft. T.I. "Make Up Bag"
64. Enrique Iglesias ft. Ludacris & Frank E "Tonight I'm Fuckin' You"
65. DJ Zinc ft. Ms. Dynamite "Wile Out"
66. Kenny Chesney "Somewhere With You"
67. Zinja Hlungwani "N'wagezani My Love"
68. Aventura "Dile Al Amor"
69. Lil Wayne ft. Cory Gunz "6 Foot 7 Foot"
70. J. Cole "Who Dat"
71. Rusko ft. Amber Coffman "Hold On"
72. JLS "The Club Is Alive"
73. Lena "Satellite"
74. Kanye West "Power"
75. Trace Adkins "Ala-Freakin-Bama"
76. Alejandra Guzmán "¿Por Qué No Estás Aquí?"
77. Sarah Darling "Whenever It Rains"
78. Stealing Angels "He Better Be Dead"
79. Chase & Status ft. Mali "Let You Go"
80. Marion Raven "Flesh and Bone"
81. The Ting Tings "Hands"
82. Willow "Whip My Hair"
83. Sarah Darling "With Or Without You"
84. Edward Maya ft. Vika Jigulina "Stereo Love"
85. Belinda ft. Pitbull "Egoísta"
86. Hera Björk "Je Ne Sais Quoi"
87. Brad Paisley "Water"
88. Yo Gotti ft. Lil Wayne "Women Lie, Men Lie"
89. YG "Toot It And Boot It"
90. Cali Swag District "Teach Me How To Dougie"
91. Lady Gaga ft. Beyoncé "Telephone"
92. Kenny Chesney "Ain't Back Yet"
93. Shontelle "Impossible"
94. Miranda Lambert "The House That Built Me"
95. Trey Songz ft. Fabolous "Say Aah"
I do these lists every year, fret hard on them, the order at the top for sure, and then bits in the middle (number 55 is the borderline between what I think worthy of being on a mixtape and what isn't), and worry the bottom few extraordinarily, what's in and what's not. I was more stringent in 2010 than in 2009: my number 100 (perhaps it was Kelis's "4th Of July," or T-ara's "Ya Ya Ya") would have graded as a 7 on the Singles Jukebox, I decided, and nothing but 8's or higher would be on the list (some of 'em former 7's that rose); so 95 is my cut-off. I think about these things. And then in the days and years following I'll only infrequently look at this list again; I know that. And what's the chance that anyone's going to go, "Whoa, J Cole, 'Who Dat,' number 70 on Frank's list; I had sure better listen to it"? Or be upset that I underrated Jeremih by a few spots (which I probably did). So I couldn't give you a good explanation of why I do these. I need a game or task of sorts to take up the music of the year. It's not like this puts the year in order. The good songs of the year are not representative of the music of the year, and songs, good and bad, aren't representative of life, even if whole squadrons of life roar forth from them. And in taking on whole hunks of songs, in rank and file, I take time I could have spent instead really peering into them, fewer of them, analyzing them, getting to know them rather than having masses of them rolling one beside the other in little sing-offs while I'm only one-tenth attentive, my eyes on a book or someone's blog, or a football article.
So, I pressed hard and half-distracted to finish this by bedtime the 31st/1st, then let it sit. What about these songs? In my actual nights, the nightlife you get in "clubs," known in the distant past as nightclubs, the schmoozing and making-a-scene type clubs, the sober girls acting drunk, has never meant anything to me, never been a goal or a gleam or a destination. Yet the idea of other people's idea of the club, the setting in 2006 for Paris Hilton's restlessness and dissatisfaction and in 2008 for The-Dream's win-and-lose-at-the-same-time pickup games, the prowling night and the stylish night - this isn't Ke$ha's night; she's at parties with yards and spillovers, outside inside garbageside carside. This instead is a secret tunnel in the city, half-lit and blobby, an entrance and everything in glistening black and bits of white. Best moment of dark gorgeousness and open ingenuous excitement on my list might be GD&TOP singing out G-H-E-T-T-O E-L-E-C-T-R-O; so this is my idea of other people's idea: it's a club they're in, touching my imagination, my dream of the dream that young Korean men have of a club, the dream emanating from the imagination of American hip-hop and r&b.
2NE1 and After School. I'm not sure what this is: beauty compacted and bright, violent-seeming beats and tunes and energy; I can't get a handle on the psychological mixture, but everything's got rap and force; whatever it is, there's no equivalent in the U.S.
E.via, I'll wait for my albums and vids list to go at length, but she's the one who caught me, who made me think, "I've got to go deep here, to figure this person out," she in cute kitty face holding a megaphone, shouting commands to a disembodied tush, and I'm touched to the heart by what I can only vaguely comprehend or imagine, whatever images and roles she's throwing in the air and trying to make what she can of; I'm envisioning a piercing Jagger intelligence in it, this imp and scamp with relentless rap chops and hot beats and the ideas that a Madonna or GaGa never really had - I fantasize, I hope, I invent.
A few more. Wayne and Em, scraping the hard rocks together, the old adolescent vengeance story, too many teardrops, I'll be ten feet tall, you'll be nothing at all. Pitbull and T-Pain, Autotuned into hydrochloric sugar acid. Intocable, the rolling heavy steps of real chesty men hopping and skipping and finding their way to an intrepid chug. Dizzie & Flo, instant electricity as soon as his voice starts running. This sounds very rock to me, driving forward ahead of the chords. Sunny Sweeney, doing what country stereotypically does, a voice of slow-moving sorrow, reciting an implacable reality that leaves her the odd woman out. Gil Scott-Heron, mood pervasive from the first note, clouds, Gil's voice not at all sly like Robert Johnson's, so when Scott-Heron's soul grabs a ride on the Greyhound it's not a road to further mischief, just a spirit wandering the perpetual distance. Didi Benami, skittish nice girl knows the score, embodies a threat.
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