CEYMA – Pop Singles Section

Yes it’s the end of the year. Yes this is a blog. Yes that means its time for some end of year lists. Or as I have dubbed them “Chris’ End of Year Media Awards”. The CEYMAs.

Way back in the mists of blogging time when these awards began, it was difficult narrowing down all the amazing singles released in a year to a list of just 10. Yes, in the pre-download days, a wide variety of interesting and exciting music made the charts – so wide, varied, interesting and exciting that I had to implement the following rules to help me :

• No cover versions (but heavily sampled songs and “mash-ups” are allowed)
• The song in question must have featured in the UK Top 40 at some point in 2008
• One song per artist only
• The song in question must not feature on an album that Chris owns
• Song in question must be at least “quite good”

This year? Not so much. Either I’m getting really old and out of touch with music tastes, or the charts really have gone to shit. Seriously, The Pussycat Dolls almost made my Top 10. The Pussycat Dolls!

Anyway, as I’m feeling so negative, I’ll begin with the ten worst singles of the year.

10. Take That – Greatest Day : Ooooh…. An entire song of Gary Barlow doing nasally falsetto with lyrics for people who apparently think that U2 are alright, but not bombastic or trite enough.

9. McFly – One For The Radio : Schizophrenic rambling set to the music of the Gummy Bears theme tune, all given away free with The Daily Mail. Oh McFly, where did it all go wrong?

8. Mark Brown ft Sarah Cracknell – The Journey Continues : Hi, I’m Sarah Cracknell of popular 90s dance-pop-indie act St Etienne. We investigated British suburban life in several critically acclaimed and well loved albums, producing such classic songs as “He’s On The Phone”, “Burnt Out Car”, “Sylvie”, “Pale Movie” and “You’re In A Bad Way”. Now I’m going to shill for a bank! Hoh ha hoh ha ha ha hoh ha hoh ha ha hoh ha hoh ha ha ha HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

7. Sugababes – Girls : Basically a cover of the song off of the Boots advert, but with the verses gutted and replaced with “Yeah! Girl Power and all that bollocks!” generica, and the choruses sung at least an octave higher than is comfortable for human ears. Once upon a time the Sugababes were praised for being the most “credible” and “authentic” of girl bands (whatever that means). Now they’re doing songs to be used in reality tv montages. For SHAME.

6. Scouting For Girls – I Wish I Were James Bond : I wish you would fuck off. Cheap, but true. Seriously, even if the actual Bond theme wasn’t to your tastes, there’s no need for this novelty song bollocks.

5. Razorlight – Wire To Wire : A Horse With No Name, but without the tune.

4. Nickelback – Photograph : Whaaaa The Hell is that on JOEY’S HEAD?! Just when you think Nickelback can’t get any worse, they prove you wrong. Utterly utterly wrong.

3. The Courteeners – Any Of It : The Courteeners had four singles this year. All of them charted in the lower regions of the chart. All of them are the same 50% Oasis 50% Libertines charmless artless nonsense. I spent a good 5 minutes trying to decide which was the worst and I just couldn’t. So all of them.

2. Oystar – I Fought The Lloyds : As someone who claimed back ridiculous bank charges when I went overdrawn a couple of years ago, I can quite happily say that you can take your rancid sub-That’s Life novelty “protest song” and insert it.

Seriously were you even trying with those lyrics? Like, at all? I’ve heard better comedy songs on Smack On The Pony.

1. Queen ft Paul Rodgers – C-Lebrity : Writing songs about the vacuity of celebrity is de rigeur these days. Looking at the charts songs about the current celebrity culture, the vacuity of wannabes, and the emptiness of fame are almost out-numbering those about over. Until now the execrable depth of this genre has been “Stars In Their Eyes” by Just Jack. Not any more. Bits of Queen plus the guy from Bad Company (which is a little like if The Beatles had reformed just after John Lennon died and replaced him with Cheryl Baker) this year vomited out this turgid, tedious waste of time.

Just painful.

And now having slagged stuff off, get to be positive, you get to see what I’m being positive about, and dismiss me as someone with no musical taste and therefore feel slightly less affronted if I’ve slagged something you like. Ah, circularity… Anywho, the top ten singles of the year are as follows :

10. Katy Perry – Hot And Cold : I’ve said before that I don’t really like the concept of “Guilty Pleasures”. If you like Foreigner/Steps/James Blunt let your freak flag fly as far as I’m concerned. There’s no need to feel shame about what you love! VOTE NO ON PROP 8! But in this case I can find a use for the term. Because liking anything by the jackdaw voiced skag who produced such “tee hee controversial” gems as “UR So Gay” and “I Kissed A Girl” is a legitimate reason for feeling guilty. And it’s not as though “Hot and Cold” is much better lyrically, containing such choice “oh I’m just provoking DEBATE” morsels “you PMS like a bitch – I should know”. But as a song it has two things going for it – it’s neat, brilliantly produced pop music and also it sounds nothing like Katy Perry. Yes, the Gods of Protools have aligned, as they do once in a blue moon, and have managed to make an artist sound simultaneously not like themselves and also tolerable. I mean the video is basically her screeching “I HATE WOMEN!” for three minutes, but as a whole? This works.

9. Britney Spears – Piece Of Me : This year was a year of two halves for Britney musically. First there came the “Crazy Britney” album, and then came the “Medicated Britney” album. Generally “Medicated Britney” worked better, adding yet another bullet in the arsenal of pill toting psychiatrists. For the most part Crazy Britney was charmless grating synth pop that sounded not only like Britney herself had nothing to do with it (nothing new there) but also as though K-Fed did. Dross singles like “Gimme More” and “Break The Ice” made us all wish that Britney would get better (/medicated) far more than any photo of her smacking a jeep with an umbrella did. But somewhere in the middle came “Piece Of Me”, Britney’s trash-can tribute to her increasingly whacked out self. It contained the words “derriere”, “havoc” and “Phillipines”, and the lyric “I’m Mrs. Most Likely To Get On TV For Strippin On The Streets”. The video featured a clearly bored Britney on auto-sass sexing up paparazzi and dancing round in toilets. As a song it’s great, as a pop-culture artifact, it’s perfect.

8. Taio Cruz – Come On Boy : Last year’s big trend that pleased me was spoken word. I love me a spoken word break in a song. This year’s big trend? The serial-killer drag queen sample. Where a male voice is simultaneously sped up and slurred and deepened to sound like it’s spilling out of the mouth of Jamie Gumb. “Piece Of Me” and “Womanizer” both had it, but its best use all year was in “Come On Boy”, an otherwise unnotable slab of club R & B by Taio Cruz. Sure it featured (in some iterations) Luciana, who has been circling around pop waiting for her second big hit, but the real fun part of “Come On Boy” is pretending you’re a cross-dressing serial murderer out on the town looking for a fresh victim. Possibly.

7. Ida Maria – I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked : A song of drunken lust that actually sounds like the singer is drunk. The lyrics are alternately croaked and howled, said lyrics often sound like they’re replacement “drunk wisdom” improvs for forgotten karaoke lyrics, and the singer is styled as though she’s just falled out of a Club NME disco at 3 in the morning on the verge of vomiting on herself. And it works because of this very drunkenness. Who can’t identify with the desire to spool out this sort of drunken crap? Yeah, woo I’m such a slag! And if I’m not I want to be! Talk to me pretty vacuous boys with pecs and a tight ass! I am queen of the dance-floor. (*chorus*)

6. Dizzee Rascal – Dance Wiv Me : The world is divided into two sorts of people. Those who recognise that the Calvin Harris insert is genius, and those still labouring under the misapprehension that it’s smug waffle. One day maybe we can all live in harmony.

5. Wiley – Wearing My Rolex : Oh that Wiley. All he wants to do is talk, drink and bubble, but then women keep on getting in the way, and wearing his nice things and playing discordant keyboards. All that AND he’s stuck with the same name as leading Radio 1 “DJ” Jo Whiley. It’s a tough life out there on the UK urban scene. Still, out of great hardship comes great art, or at least great grimy moments of pop garage like this.

4. Robyn – Be Mine : It’s a long and lazy tradition dating back to the out-of tune horrors of Ace of Base- comparing every Scandinavian pop act out there to ABBA. As though it’s easy to trace a line from “Lay All Your Love On Me” to “Barbie Girl” just because the singers were born within 200 miles of each other. But with Robyn there’s a good case to be made, mostly due to the broad streak of melancholy streaking itself through her work. This song sees Robyn at her bleakest, caught in a perpetual dismal rainy day following around a lost love trying to make him notice her but ultimately failing, and it’s built around the most heart-breaking spoken word interlude in a pop song ever (I dare you to listen to “I just miss you…that’s all” and not feel a twinge). It makes “With Every Heartbeat” look positively sunny but at the same time, any pop single this good should be enough to make anybody happy just with its perfect appreciation of the form, even with the wrist-slashing nature of its subject.

3. Beyonce – Single Ladies : IF YOU LIKE IT THEN YOU SHOULDA PUT A RING ON IT! (*repeat to fade*)

2. Little Jackie – The World Should Revolve Around Me : Some times I wonder why I watch the X Factor. Not because I’m a snob with a low opinion of reality shows (I’m not), or because Louis Walsh is the backwash sluiced out of the arse-end of everything that’s wrong with pop music (even though he is) but because it’s increasingly become like watching Logan’s Run with Hit Songs Of The 90s dubbed over the top. Anybody over the age of 22 is viewed with suspicion and disdain, in favour of foetus faced neophytes like Diana Knickers, Haemorhydian Roberts, Eggham Queef, and Alexandra Burke (no humorous name-change required). And, as I am now TWENTY-THREE WHOLE YEARS OF AGE, that shit makes me feel old. That the “Old people” category contains people in their mid 20s says a whole lot of bad about our current culture. So I like to think that songs like this, fresh, lively, fun, produced by two people in their honest to God 30s (her wikipedia page says she’s 30 but come the fuck on) is a poke in the to Simon Cowell. God knows he needs as many as possible.

1. Alphabeat – Fascination : It’s been a bad year for pop music. Christina Aguilera finally disappeared all the way up her own arse. Annie stalled so repeatedly it became actively embarrassing. The torch of British pop divadom was carried by Adele and Duffy, two women so entirely in hock to poorly rendered pastiches of 60s music that they might as well have sung barefoot. Pink’s album campaign stalled after the first single, and half the year’s big pop releases seemed to be futile attempts to get Britain hooked on Radio Disney. So thank God for Alphabeat. Listening to Chris Moyles’ baffled voice as a pop act became massive despite his lowest common denominator homophobic sarcasm AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN CONTAIN A SEXY LADY FOR HIM TALK ABOUT SPAFFING OVER was the highlight of my Office Radio year. It’s hard to pick out their best single, so as I’m in doubt, I’ve just gone for the first one. A roaring, joyous, bouncing, almost incoherently happy jive-a-long of a pop single.