Tuesday 21 December 2010

Best Singles of 2010: 20-1


01. Angel - Corona
After the pop-rock missfire of 2000's And Me U album, Olga returns olda n' wiser, bringing Corona back to its roots - tragic gay clubs. Angel tinkles with sexy synth shimmers, glistening piano ripples, arctic trance temperatures and her own raspy rejoice (a fiesty trigger of manic excitement that gives surprising heat). Filled with an insatiable rash of stylish atmospherics, its slushy trance trimmings are perfect to really ignite the energy and wanton abandon of Olga de Souza's eccentric charisma, emphatic delivery and previous ability to lip-sync for her life (she famously never used to sing the tunes herself). Souza goes full-throttle for the thumping chorus, sounding possessed and slightly scary whilst infectiously cackling away to herself 'I'm hot tonight' in a dizzy frenzy of borderline-confidence and exuberantly tailored eurotrash trance-pop with plaintive undercurrents yet never under-sold.


02. Free To Love Again - Katie Price
Gleaming with loathing, lust, crippling disdain and other salty staines, this literally sounds like a car-crash of remnants from the decade that brought us Alexia and a debris of Gina G remixes, with its utter-gutter sense of shamelessness and dazzling display of scattering piano keys setting the scene within its first 3 seconds! With a bitter taste of KY and rusty cum, stench of poppers and toxic plumes of pink caressing gay clubgoers not sure whether to be offended or scream like bitches for more: Katie's tripple-penetrating cocktail of lavishly lubricated italo-house, seething vanity and sheer hard-boiled adrenaline re-invented the genre of dance music from the 1990s and left pop slags all over the world gaping for more. No love is lost as she kindly sneers such septic lines as the magnificently insincere "I'd be a disappointment to you every single day" with the kind of slinky, cock-crazed kinkiness not heard since Britney's Gimme More. Botoxed up to her eyeballs, even ex page 3 models with disabled children have feelings too you know. With more of a head-rush than downing a dozen vodka shots, Price's salivating return to music charted lower than her cleavage, but promises more eventually and I for once cannot wait.


03. Echoes Love - Jennifer Rush
Despite stapling her face to look like a paper-mache panda bear, her incredible soggy-soprano voice is unstoppable (just don't ask her to sing live - doctors told her a maximum of 0.5 facial expressions a day). With electronic pop elements that get sexier, slicker and denser with each spin, Echoes Love is a dance-pop fan's wet dream. Its disco-arousal is most explicit during the middle-8, which almosts bursts into Kim Wilde's 90s treatment of If I Can't Have You, except poor Jenny probably couldn't afford the royalities, and some of the countable seconds that follow erect the euphoria so high I was almost tempted to shoot this straight to the top of my list (the track itself shoots its load at the 2:58 minute mark with a gust of Jeniffer's gorgeous ad libbings that sound a bit like "haaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaa-aa-a" if I am not mistaken). The rapturous energy is continued on the faaabulous remix package.


04. Tickles - Elin Lanto
As far as remixes go, the Almighty edit of this absolutely stole the show. Tarting up this song sounds like it must have been an utter joy - it peaks so fucking high that I sometimes believed I too had a vagina needing scratched. In the words of RuPaul, Elin Lanto's pussy was on fire with this one. Love made her stupendous! We know exactly what she means by tickles - for guys it's a twitch not a tickle (unless you're a bottom).


05. Pacific Coast Highway - Hole
The song that makes being Courtney Love actually sound worth it and then some. Almost joyful in its wistful aching 'for what I'll never have', Courntney coaching belief whilst slurring poingnantly 'your whole world is in my hands' is a proud and bittersweet moment, stumbling into something out of reach but felt nevertheless. 'Miles and miles' of reasons to be beautiful is now 'miles and miles' of melancholy and regretful twitter-updates. The fuzzed-up riffs are breezy, solid and resonant with the rock icon's unmistakable sense of gutter elegance: backing vocals fly you into the waves to "drown" and be reborn red-carpet ravaged, rehab-revitalised and irresponsibly ravishing.


Joint 06. Blackout - Heidi Montag
Whilst the world continues to wait for La Toya Jackson to find a cure for AIDS that rhymes with iTunes, the even more selfless self-promoter Heidi has dived right in with the next best thing and released a debut album that arguably ejaculates its richest flavour with this sweet and innocent pop serum that has more juice than Beyonce's water retention. Squeeky clean slut pop perfection from Hollywood's D-listed D-cupper, sounding like a vapidly sleazy Jane Wiedlin coked up and cocked up to the 9s with deliciously icky vocals thinner than dental floss. We live in a cruel, twisted and misogynist world, and yet cuts like this (and the album Superficial offers more where it came from) substitute amazingness where some people rely on talent and natural body shapes. Like, "whoah-oh-oh-oh" as she rap/sings - take that Nadine. Heidi's fame fatale was an early front-runner of mine for album of 2010.


Joint 06. Better Than Her - Matisse
So I fucked up: I forgot about this, but had always intended it to be in my top 10 anyway. With slinky persuasion, an imodest hook and a vocal more nasal than Kylie singing whilst gaffa-taped, Matisse was all set for summer-baked pop par excellence with the best blow-job boasting lyric since Paris Hilton's Nothing In This World. Only the rules in music are: vagina, talent and a disco beat = obscurity, diminishing returns and the odd cruddy PA if you're lucky.



07. Lights Down Low - Kim Wilde
With peircing blue eyes that could make icebergs seem moderately habitable, Kim's beauty and passion on record were undiminished. More than equalling the glamorous distaste apparant in her voice on tracks such as Never Trust A Stranger, her big comeback track found her on blistering form. Glamour and sleaze chaffing perfectly as Kim agrees with democratic promiscuity oozing out every pore, 'I know where this could lead ... what you want is what you see'.


08. Wonderful Life - Hurts
The new poster boys of pop noir came up with that special something - a bona fide classic. Drafty paper-cut chorus and verses that get progressively charged with masculine frustrations.


09. Once - Diana Vickers
There was so much to dislike about 'The Vickers' as she likeably calls herself in the 3rd person: talking about herself in the 3rd person; sounding like a seal having sezarian without anesthetic; and being more contrived than a katy Perry innuendo about cocks. However, Once was the killer tune its writer Cathy Dennis hadn't produced since the days of Sweet Dreams and Toxic. Her album tanked: clearly it should have been called Once Upon A Time. The song was so good that British record buyers refused to fork out on the album twice after it got released to sustain the massive interest of her top 30 follow-up The Boy Who Murdered Love.


10. Better Than love - Hurts
Otherwise known as the dawn of the new Depeche Mode. Skin-crawling electronic, fervid morbidity and haunting euphoria are grinded together under a contracting bassline, and an almost horrific ecstasy via an instrumental middle-8 instrumental seizure that sounds like liquidising the galaxy.


11. You Lost Me - Christina Aguilera
By far the most outstanding vocal performance of the year, this stargazing torch ballad unfolds from the 'vulnerable' deflation of the pre-chorus to the 'raw' outer-body emotions of thinking the whole world is just completely fucked up. Literally going through the motions: a genuine composition of beauty. It's almost too melancholic for its own good - Aguilera sounds positively suicidal and scarred for life. We all have demons, but to tap into them with such conviction is something I'm just in awe of her for. The comedy Hex Hector remix can give you those extra 3 minutes on the treadmill for sheer hilarity alone.


12. Clap Your Hands - Sia
I am fooled almost everytime I hear this song's intro into thinking New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle is playing. Its winding guitar melody from the intro is almost identical, which can only be a good thing. I heard it in Europe on the radio a lot - dazzling songraft, spine-tingling excitement with playful energy.


13. Stop The Music - The Pipettes
The starry-eyed finale that sounds like a transportation to nirvana via Saint Etienne's Avenue and Kylie's Light Years cloud-sifting backing vocals. And let's not forget the shoulder-jiggable song that comes before it.
Italic

14. Let's Dance - Linda Sundblad
Sundblad's wanton chorus goes on the rampage to 'face the music' like any other sensible binge-drinking clubber who loves Madonna and vodka.


15. Fire With Fire - Scissor Sisters
The gay brother to The Killer's Human and surrogate father to Kim Wilde's Real Love. It's the Rex The Dog remix I bat my lashes for however.


16. Candy - Mini Viva
Like the godchildren of Betty Boo, these girls executed one of the most unassuming pop songs of the century. Everything about it just burst with attitude and focus. Airtight pop working at full capacity: an intense sugar fix.


17. Alejandro - Lady Gaga
Picture it: Eurovision 2010; Ace of Base open as the Swedish entry with a bulging bass, acidic synths burning through the speakers and Jenny's plaintive fury delivering those sneering lines towards those cliched Spanish waitors who drugged and daisy-chained her without leaving their phone numbers afterwards (that is what the song is about, no?); and then at verse two a part of their set slides up to reveal the appalled kryptonite-eyed Viking princess beauty of Linn as she struts forward in an all black ensenble and sparkly cross necklace that weights a tonne, so heavy in fact that actual midgets have to drag it forward as she moves closer like a serial killer, to join her sister whatshername, floating like the grim reaper of dance-pop past, and breathes in the audience's deafning screams as if it were the 'unimportant air' Deborah Harry sang about on that song called Maria. This amazing, thumping song makes me think of this - if that makes me sound insane then I obviously need a new heroine dealer.


18. Poison - Nicole Scherzinger
If only this were the PCD as we'd be enjoying an album to go along with this already. At least we have one more person, besides Dannii Minogue, making Cheryl Cole look completely useless, racist and irrelevant. What's most hilarious of all is how old Nicole sounds - at first I thought it was Dawn Penn's big comeback!


19. I Like It - Enrique Iglesias
More 'banging' than my favourite fantasies involving being stranded in Afganistan (bringing all those soldiers together of course - I'm a lover not fighter), Enrique whined as assexually as ever and yet somehow I remained turned on by muscle mary's from New Jersey in the video helping the Hero singer blag himself his biggest US hit in years.


20. Like A Lady - Monrose
Trannytastic trance-sexual slice of pop from the now-defunct German girlband of whom I seriously thought were a bunch of trannies when I saw them repeatedly on the music channel Viva (I remember thinking 'wow, what a genius concept', what with the song's name and the album being called Ladylike). More po-faced than my initial perceptions, the taught tempo and sharp vocal poise nails what is a sharp, sleek and succinctly chic procedure of vogueing dance-pop trashiness.

Other landmark lists in the world of blog:
Best Singles of 2010: 40-21
Best Singles of 2010: 60-41
Best Singles of 2010: 80-61
Best Singles of 2010: 100-81
Best Singles of 2009
Best Singles of 2008
Best Singles of 2007
Best Singles of 1998
Best Singles of 1997
Best Singles of 1996

8 comments:

JP.M said...

Happy New Year 2011 everyone and soon, JPaul

Diva Incarnate said...

Merci JP - I tried to leave a comment on your blog but not sure if I clicked on the right buttons since it was in French!

Happy new year and thanks for reading x

Anonymous said...

Wow, I can't wait to go through your 2010 singles lists! From just a quick glance-over, I can already tell I'm going to have fun reading them. :)

Hope you're having a great start to 2011! :D

Diva Incarnate said...

Oh me too with your albums lists. Expect comments soon. Are you the creator of that Dana International site by any chance?

Anonymous said...

Ooh, I'll look forward to your thoughts! :)

Yep, guilty as charged! :D

Diva Incarnate said...

It's the only site I use for news - there's not much else for her English-language fans and yet her celebrity thrives ever more in Israel it seems. Keep up the good work I guess :)

Anonymous said...

Yeah, for me ECHOES LOVE from Jennifer Rush was one of the best songs of the year too! Love the remix most. I am still wondering it was not on top positions on the charts, but maybe the song needs more time... who knows. Thanks for sharing!

Diva Incarnate said...

Thanks for the comment: it was an unusually good song, I love both versions - particularly the ad-lib that comes after the middle-8 when the chorus starts again.

The album was a huge surprise as well.