Best Singles of 2010: 80-61

61. Waka – Shakira

The second rabbit Shakira has had to pull out to save her latin ass after the record label have fucked things over with royal aplomb. She Wolf had moments of greatness on it: this doesn’t compete but delivered an ultra-commercial jingle for an almost-worldwide sporting phenomenon (if it were a basketball song it would have hit the Billboard Hot 100 top spot).

62. Skinny Little Bitch - Hole

This got blasted as a lame re-write of Plump (by myself and countless others), but has more in common with Hole’s first album. The first of three songs by Hole to make my list. Love would sell her soul to be a 16 year old Disney brat and she knows it.

63. Raise Your Glass – Pink

The Wallmart Courtney Love returns sounding like a Katy Perry song, which in turn sound like Pink songs: it’s great to hear someone who can sing them whomever that may be. Formulaic and lame ‘bad ass’ lyrics aside, it returned her to the US chart summit.

64. Get Out of My Way – Kylie Minogue

Hardly rocking the boat, this just sounded like a slick Fever remix. Dannii’s charity project K needs to up her game as the only thing going up these days for her as that ghastly left eyebrow. Glistening production aside, it's simply diminishing returns these days.

65. Scream - Kelis

Presumably that's what she does when she looks at her chart positions. Not my choice for a single (that would have been the retro-disco Song For The Baby or the elusive, bristling beauty of Brave), the video looked cheaper than the price her second album goes for online these days, but this is still compulsive as part of the whole album (which still plays perfectly).

66. Candy - Aggros Santos ft. Kimbely Wyatt

Momentarily upstaging Nicole, I must admit that is where the fun initially lay. Naggingly insistent, it’s basically the 1 hook on continual loop with Wyatt's paper thin vocals devouring that chorus.

67. Cooler Than Me - Mike Posner

Posing as a makeshift Tiao Cruz, he’s probably 2 songs away from being better as that would mean a total of 3 listenable tunes.

68. Getting Over – Dave Guetta ft. Fergie and some black dude

The amount of re-releases both Love Don’t Let Me Go and Just A Little More Love had was plain ridiculous and yet again this has the same jagged guitars plucking away like a passive-agressive make-up artist working on Subo's eyebrows – saved only by dance-junkie Fergie.

69. Better Than Today – Kylie 'triangular-nostrils-are-in-this-season' Minogue

Not even better than her last single, obviously, whilst a honky tonk Scissor Sisters fetish almost disguises that shrill child prosititute vocal style of hers during the plunging chorus.

70. One Shot – JLS

Actually there are 4 of you, 2 of which I’d do in a second, so that would be two shots.

71. Dancing With Every Heartbeat Whilst Hanging On My Own (Betcha Can't Handle My Sorry White Ass Boo) - Robyn

To quote 80s cult nu-wave pop goddess Cristina, why doesn't she just slit her throat or just shut up?

72. Mr. Mysterious - Vanessa Amorosi

Hazardous was one of my very favourite albums of last year: Touch Me, Ice and Blow Me were screaming to be singles louder than her fans yelling 'lesbian' at her at concerts. Just like her shoulders, this track is big, bold and bulky. I guess Pink's not the only chunky girl who can sing, but a major shame about these follow-ups.

73. Love Made Me Stupid – Elin Lanto

Not quite rocking my world, Elin strikes sharpest with her lethal dance subjections instead.

74. Just A Dream - Nelly

What is it with me and muscled back guys who go uh uh uh uh?

75. Your Love - Ke$ha

Her songs just kind of get played, and you hear them sometimes, and sometimes you actually like them a bit.

76. So Yesterday - Toni Braxton

With that voice still intact in a way that puts Mariah, Celine and even Christina to shame, it’s a major crime that Toni is getting these Halo knock-offs even if it was a shrewd move. However, it’s not just her ideas that are bankrupt so I won’t kick a tramp when she’s begging.

77. Crossfire - Brandon flowers

Well he’s still the most beautiful man on the planet, but I don’t see the point of a nice-but-unremarkable solo venture unless those other guys were too busy getting their hair cut to make album number 4.

78. Stay – Hurts

This is straying very far from where their other singles are going to feature, mainly because as a single it is just much too pompous, strained, overblown and po-faced.

79. Hot - Inna

Her signature tune, with vocals thinner than dental floss, is the year’s most pervasive club hit. Not that I've been to clubs more than 4 times this year at the very most

80. Acapella - Kelis

I’m glad this brought her back to the top end of the charts, but it’s rather flat in comparison to the better sounds going on on Flesh Sounds (a modern masterpiece by the way).

Best Singles of 2010: 100-81

81. California Gurls - Katy Perry ft. Snoop Dog
If it wasn’t for the skanktastic delivery of “sex-sssse! On the beech” this wouldn’t be on this list. Her voice sounds like the taste of a lesbian's arm-pit. Plus she picked the fugliest rapper of them all to get her played on urban radio - what a spontaneous, organic way of making music, gurl.


82. The wanted
Who cares what this actually sounds like? Just pick your favourite, grab some toilet paper (plus KY if you're American or just Jewish), and decide whether the others are decent enought to 'make up the numbers', or if those accumulating Tesco bags (from all the Nadine albums you bought this year of course) would finally come in handy (just think about it for a second).


83. Telephone - Lady Gaga ft. Beyonce
With legs that make a T-Rex look anorexic, Beyonce realy did try to up her game for the full-throttle video and even held on to her look for her own next single, which not surprisingly flopped harder than her FUP when Jay-Z decides its her turn on top.


84. Ambitions - Joe
Poor gay Joe. I'm not really into 5ft 2 inch bottoms, but he did deliver an ultra fierce mum-friendly pop jam. You go, gurl! Even for a gay guy, he must be really bummed.


85. Never Marry An Icon - Pete Burns
Not a patch on previous triumphs such as the vitriolic avalanche of rave sounds that was Nukleopatra (the original Bad Romance if you ask me), but it sure was good to hear this always-together 80s misfit (enough about his new cheekbones) superstar slur his words on daytime TV. Even his botox sounds autotuned.


86. Broken Heels – Burkey
And ironically not quite putting her, er, stamp on a formulaic RedOne stomper. Strangely, the video concept seemed to mirror the content of a few of my favourite fantasies, but with women in them.


87. Amazing - Inna
Modest hard-boiled Eastern European dance diva's really know how to ingratiate themselves to Middle-England.


88. Baby It's Christmas – Bananarama
Stodgy Hi-NRG whatever the subject matter. If only the lyrics were as dowdy as their vocals then we might have had an unforgettable camp classic.


89. Hole In My Heart - Alphabeat
90s dance piano keys, but sadly not a Cyndi Lauper cover.


90. Right Thru Me - Nicki Minaj
Not quite 'minajing' to live up to the hype, her persona is two-dimensional, but we need her. Want a bet she's holding out to call her 3rd album Minaj-a-trois? She's crazy, you know.


91. Love Is All - Infernal
Why did these guys vanish? Paw is too hot for obscurity. They need to leak a sex tape. A car-wash of trance sounds, exposing a new melancholy in Lina's vocals. It should be higher, but I would need to re-arrange my whole entire list to accomodate it - I'm sure Paw is just as difficult to accomodate, but in a more fun sense of difficulty.


92. All For You - Ace of Base
Really proving the critics wrong with their worst album ever and lowest sales ever. Twats. However, I can't deny how spectacularly average this sounds. $uce$!


93. Everything To Me - Monica
Mildly tedious MOR shoulder-padded Rn'B that fit in perfectly with both Whitney's and Toni's recent past-their-prime offerings. Just a twitch away from singing "don't want diamond rings", but that voice is stealthier than ever. Furlon album track Stay Or Go would have been in my top 20, no doubt!


94. Gotta Be Somebody - Shayne Ward
I don't think a cover of a 2 year old UK top 20 song was his original goal. Hurry up and sign a contract with Triga film productions already.


95. I Wish - Mini viva
Lacking the sugar-fix of Candy, Tokyo was the surprise hit of last year and co-written by cooler-than-thou Annie, and this dreamy slice of pop might technically have been from 2009 but I'm ramming back in.


96. The wanted
They might have had a song or two out. I just wanted to put a picture of them up. What I will say it, the pic above was taken from a spread in Gay Times magazine, and I made an old man look at me in disgust when I told a friend quite simply without thinking that 'I'd fuck all them at once'. Whoopsie.


97. Mary J – I Am...
...Over? Check out Christina Aguilera's song of the same name instead.


98. Radio - Alesha
Flopping as hard as her useless dance comments, this ain't no Cahill remix of Breathe Slow, but still has some left-over fizz.


99. I Make You Gaga - Morales ft. Janice Robinson
So this is trash, utter garbade, gimmicky and deliberately wanking off Gaga's dick - however, Janice is a living legend and not about to turn down establishing a working relationship with a 90s dance producer who might just give her a nice club hit one day if Deborah Cox stops answering the phone.


100. Promise This - Cheryl Cole
So good I almost forget she's a 'former' racist. And she can't be racist, she's singing in French really badly.

Don't Judge, Just Enjoy!

Literally, the best thing in the world right now!

Mariah Carey - ALS from Mariah Polska on Vimeo.

Mariah Review Coming Soon, Y'all! As I said on popjustice, she even puts Nikki French to shame...

Cyndi Lauper - Sisters of Avalon (1997)

Now I like Sisters of Avalon a lot, it got its singer Cyndi Lauper back to the trash-bin kicking kinetic form of the Money Changes Everything video, tapped into her singer-songwriter aspirations without the uncomforateble autobiographical elements of Hat Full of Stars and cushioned the rest with trip-hop and even one song strays into Eurovision territory.


The witchy-wail of Sisters of Avalon is a near-chanting shoelessly dancing in front of an outside fire kind of ritualistic thng. A bizarre song, but I love it for the way she sings 'reverberating', a lyric she forgot when I seen her live a few years ago!


The silky bedtime lullaby Fall Into Your Dreams is the first time Mark Saunders gets to really put his stamp on things; something the guy might have something to say about in private as publicly he has kindly but tellingly explained that he found the experience of producing a Lauper LP was more than a little difficult and something he would not do again ('LOL').



Now here is a song with wide appeal: obviously Cyndi paid tribut to 'the community' (Jesus, I wish she'd stop this term - there is no gay community, 'darl') when she reeled in a claque of tragic trannies for her Hey Now remake; and on The Ballad of Cleo & Joe over-thinks this drag thing a bit, but does start releasing her inner dance diva for the first time. Anyone thinking her 2008 studio set Bring Ya To The Brink was a cynical for-the-certainkindofgays affair should look back to this song here, or perhaps even the Junior Vasquez remixes from the 12 Deadly Cyns era onwards, and reconsider writing Cyndi off this way. The song has a pounding ethnic disco vibe that would happily soundtrack the Eurovision song contest even to this day.


So You Don't Know is obviously meant to be some sort of grimmacing anthem, but it's a bit short of that and symbolises the issue overall: rich textures, but lacking the sheer melodic thrills to beem themselves into the airwaves. It's sweet to hear the Cyndi trademark organ though.


The snarling Love To Hate could be heavier-sounding, but to criticise the production is without knowing what Cyndi had been screaming at Saunders to do with it. A bit of shiny, electric voltage a la She's So Unusual would have gone a long way. Showing glimpses of something amazing, as a tiny criticism, it's just not nearly as grand as it ought to be.


Proving she's more than just a refugee from the 80s, Hot Gets A Little Cold is a Joan Osborne-esque ballad with the token Lauper fragility, drafty strings and the kind of redemptive warmth you get from clutching a hot chocolate in the winter. This would have fit in perfectly with the climate of radio females-with-guitars of the time (Sheryl, Alanis, Joan, Lisa Loeb, et all). However, Lauper isn't some priviledged phonie pretending to have problems - this is simple, effective and easily one of her most stunning songs.


The glum but gorgeous Unhook The Stars is dreamy and seductive: lacking in a tune, it doesn't half sound 'quite nice'. Self-written Searching might not be what I'm looking for, but atmospheric and ghostly echos make it slightly interchangeable with the more haunting Mother. Pop-jazz shadings of the partly spoke word Say A prayer offer a blissfully gentle deviation that no other pop diva of her kind has really tried before (Madonna's Erotica? It's perhaps a bit Secret Garden-lite). Perhaps feeling confident enough in her achievements, Brimstone & Fire suddenly flashes some humour to celebrate. Choice line is her remark about a lesbian touching Lauper's shoulder ('and I didn't even scold her').


For the most part, perhaps Lauper has simply outgrown the big shiny pop of her debut. Instead, she nibbles on mood, wails sisterhood chants, and seductively strums her most unassuming song in years. Her then-second best album!
Rating:
8/10