I Actually Waited until the End of the Year

I find that falling in love with music is never straightforward. A song might exist in the trivia of your periphery the first few times you hear it – at a house party, the last verse and chorus as you skim radio stations while driving, in the blur of The Hype Machine's Popular playlist for a certain day, as the soundtrack to an emphatic TV moment. But then one morning you somehow wake up with it in your head and realise you don't have it in mp3, you download it and play it several times like you're cramming for an exam on it. And all of a sudden you're in love, trying to find out if there's an album or when it's being released, reading the band's Wikipedia page, loving it on Last.fm. Other times a song you just know can become a song that you love when a third party is involved, like hearing it at some balanced moment during terrific times with friends or someone special, or at the peak of a bottle of whiskey.

I'm not sure how other people in the internet feel when someone recommends them a song. When someone tells me about a song they think I'd like, I instinctively want to reject whatever it is without even listening to it. Especially when they say something like:
'Hey Brad, you like The Shins and Big Country, right? I bet you'd dig Frightened Rabbit. Listen to The Modern Leper, you'll love it!'
I want to reply 'No! I'm not that simple! My musical tastes are inimitable, inspired by nothing but serendipity and insight. Don't treat my ears like some Prolog subroutine. I'm a unique snowflake motherfucker! Get out of my brain!'

With that said, I've made a list of songs from 2010 which I think are good. And I've posted them online, arranged from "best" to "best and listened to the most", pretty much. I haven't bothered with streaming links or anything because I figure most people are smart enough to know how to search on Grooveshark and YouTube and The Hype Machine if the vague sentence describing each song piques any curiosity.

I have also uploaded all the songs posted tonight into a zip file that you can download here, in case you feel the urge to immerse yourself in my recommendations for an hour or so.

The list is as follows...

44. Active Child - She Was a Vision
Shimmery, icy synth pop that sounds a lot like a cross between M83 and Bon Iver.
43. Magnetic Man feat. Katy B - Perfect Stranger (Benga Remix)
Three Dubstep heavyweights made an album of popstep. Benga adds a little grunt back into the first single to round it out.
42. Cold War Kids - Royal Blue
Californian rockers with a rocking punk/soul moment of clarity.
41. LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yrself Clean
All the best facets of LCD Soundsystem in one song: big build up, catchy loop and a generous payoff.
40. Clubroot - Toe To Toe
A big throbby instrumental soundscape, perfect for programming too.
39. Gypsy & The Cat - The Piper's Song
Golden warm dance-rock from Melbourne DJs turned Cut Copy wannabes.
38. Cee Lo Green - Fuck You
This hit succeeds using a super catchy doo-wop beat combined with a sugary voice that swears a lot.
37. Rusko - Hold On feat. A Coffman (Sub Focus Remix)
Another Popstep tune turned into a raging beast by DnB producer Sub Focus.
36. Bonobo - All In Forms
From Ninja Tune, the kind of grooves so chill they can turn any moment into a summer afternoon.
35. Marina And The Diamonds - I Am Not A Robot
Being slightly Welsh and slightly Greek makes for an interesting singing voice.
34. Plan B - She Said (16Bit Remix)
16Bit adds filthy dubstep beats to turn Plan B's dark show-tune into something almost morbid.
33. Spoon - Written In Reverse
Britt Daniel destroys a piano in the name of a sucessful pop song.
32. Caribou – Odessa
An acid trip of pounding loops and organic beats that builds and builds.
31. Martin Solveig feat. Dragonette – Hello
A cute, punchy dance track that I for some reason played at the start of every day in the office for about two months.
30. Vampire Weekend – Cousins
Vampire Weekend are masters of variety, but here they just strum out some frantic and fun guitar pop.
29. Robyn - Dancing On My Own
Swedish electro-pop queen sings a tragic dance ballad that's so smooth, and delicious to the ear.
28. Skream feat. Freckles - How Real
The bubbly keys and cut up vocals make up an enticing icing for this low end heavy track.


27. Drake - Over (Amtrak Remix)
Amtrak turns Drake's boastful album opener into an un-ignorable dance floor smash.
26. Big Boi feat. Vonnegutt - Follow Us
Big Boi's ice cool flow on some rock festival anthem beat.
25. The Tallest Man On Earth - Love Is All
Gorgeous folk from Sweden's answer to Bob Dylan.
24. Menomena - Dirty Cartoons
A majestic, many instrumented composition pretending to be indie rock.
23. Frightened Rabbit - Skip The Youth
Scottish vocals over a building, emotive storm of indie rock – hard to not get caught up.
22. Holy Fuck - Stay Lit
A gravel sandwich of electric guitars, drum machine and momentum.
21. Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Arcade Fire with the best of their multi-instrumental, middle-class epics from their latest album The Suburbs.
20. Wacka Flocka Flame - Hard In Da Paint
A brutal, testosterone filled, no holds barred hip hop chest pounding.
19. RJD2 feat. The Catalyst, Illogic & NP - A Son's Cycle
RJD2 doing what I prefer him to, producing colossal instrumentals for MCs to rap over.
18. Breakage – Speechless
A wide load of throbbing half-step rhythms with vocals from North Londoner Donae'o.
17. The Thermals - I Don't Believe You
Ever so slightly matured Portland punk-rockers with more crunchy ear-candy.
16. The Sunshine Underground - In Your Arms
Rising Leeds indie group who successfully blend elements of Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys and Bloc Party into their own slightly dancey rock.
15. Crystal Castles – Vietnam
A long, thick ball of dark drums, synths and noise to get immersed in.
14. Ratatat - Grape Juice City
The best of the fruity instrumentals from their 2010 record.
13. Bassnectar feat. King Fantastic - Bass Head
MC King Fantastic delivers lyrical momentum to Bassnectar's best production of the year.
12. Statik Selektah feat. Lil Fame, Saigon And Sean Price - Critically Acclaimed
East Coast hip hop from the well networked Massachusetts MC that doesn't hide its old school influences.
11. The Books - Free Translator
A relaxing, reflective tune featuring a lovely collage of samples and a mellow bass groove.

The final 10 tracks of my best of 2010 list. A zip containing these ten is here.

Mark Ronson proved on his covers album a few years ago that he could reproduce genre melting pop like a pro. In 2010 he kept his address book, but composed his own melodies and proved they could be just as infectious.

Adelaide born Sia, since moving overseas has made contacts with many talented people including Greg Kurstin - producer for Lily Allen and Kylie among others. Together they made Stop Trying, a brief but super catchy indie-pop single, cramming energy and grooves into a compact 160 seconds.

I was actually happy to find out Rick Ross lied about his criminal past and invented most of the stuff in his raps. It makes it easier to enjoy the testosterone and feather plumping without worrying that I'm advocating criminal activity.

Scatta is pretty much the perfect blend of dubstep, aurally pleasing MCs and apocalyptical beats. It sounds a little cheesy from a distance, but if you crank it up and close your eyes you can truly believe you're piloting a MechWarrior through hordes of zombies or Zerglings.

Matt & Kim sound like an optimistic punk band with a keyboard instead of guitars - energetic melodies; rapid percussion and simple, bouncy grooves. Lately they've tried to mature into larger, more complex orchestrations (still with only the two instruments). When they pull it off it makes for some of the most catchy, fun songs of the year.

As mentioned above, electro inclined Skrillex doesn't mind dabbling in some dark beats. His work on iSquare's Hey Sexy Lady was something else though, converting a RnB piece of dancefloor fluff into a Jack Torrance-esque moment of psychopathy. The blending of saccharine vocals and the blindsiding, hulking electro beat is phenomenal.

The Tallest Man on Earth gets featured twice this year because he put out two outstanding releases in the one year. After several albums of masterful acoustic folk he picks up an electric guitar for the first time ever on The Dreamer, and the result is predictably beautiful.

Pop music has been obsessed with fidelity for the last few years, carving out micro-genres based on how much rhyming cloaks a group's songs. With their bedroom recording roots, Far East Movement have floated along this competition with grace, a threesome of producers skilled at conscripting the sonic demons hiding in the margins of amateur recording. But there's also beauty to be found in the places where unfiltered sunlight finds gaps in the clouds, and the embrace of that contrast gave Far East Movement a valuable new weapon on the haunting Like a G6.

LOLZ, Not Really..

Half beautiful and half sad, this single from New York's Yeasayer blends a healthy batch of the digital '80s into their existing indie rock sound. Madder Red has a simple, haunting loop of keys and crooning, coupled with finely performed guitar work and - when you pay attention to it - some very suberb bass guitar. Smoother than smooth, this is a piece of pop bliss.