Of these 5 genre/radio format-oriented lists, country is the one where I'm the most out of my element, and last year was my first attempt at a year-end country list or even just consciously stepping up how much country radio I listen to and trying to become conversant in it. I love George Jones and listened to him more than ever this year, and that stuff can never be topped. But just like any genre, the stuff that lives on the radio today is its own thing that I try to appreciate on its own terms. And considering the way popular music has been headed in general, country actually seems to have less of an identity crisis than some other genres, or at least is in a more comfortable and good-natured rut.

Here's the Spotify playlist:

1. The Band Perry - "Better Dig Two"
#1 Country Airplay, #28 Hot 100
The Band Perry's big crossover hit from a couple years back, "If I Die Young," framed a love song in terms of death, and the lead single from their follow-up album followed suit with even more intense morbidity. Brandy Clark had a pretty good year, releasing her own solo debut and writing singles like "Mama's Broken Heart" by Miranda Lambert and "Follow Your Arrow" by Kacey Musgraves, but this is definitely my favorite thing she's done.

2. Brad Paisley - "Southern Comfort Zone"
#2 Country Airplay, #54 Hot 100
When I made last year's list, this song had just been released, and I threw it on the 'worst' list because the couple times I'd heard it on the radio I found the whole intro with the clips of "The Andy Griffith Show" really annoying and on-the-nose. And then I spent all of 2013 really loving this song and wondering how I could not instantly see how great it was, especially after "Accidental Racist" showed what a bad Brad Paisley song actually sounds like.

3. Brett Eldredge - "Don't Ya"
#1 Country Airplay, #30 Hot 100
The country singles marketplace is pretty crowded and there's always new acts trying to get a foot in the door, although it's not quite like how rappers and pop singers are constantly trying to get a song big enough to justify an album release. Sometimes new acts do have to swing the bat a few times before they hit one out of the park, though, like Brett Eldredge. He got close in 2010 with a moderate hit called "Raymond," but then the next single flopped and his album stayed shelved for a couple more years, until "Don't Ya" made him a chart-topping star this past summer. It's the kind of swagged out sexy dude country song that has mostly been the worst thing about country radio the last couple years, but this song has a nice swing to it and there's an interesting, soulful grain to Eldredge's voice, so it works for me.

4. Keith Urban f/ Miranda Lambert - "We Were Us"
#1 Country Airplay, #26 Hot 100
This is the current #1 song on the radio and I mean, it's just such a simple song, the lyrics aren't much more than a bunch of vague signifiers of romantic nostalgia, and I don't generally love either of the singers' usual stuff, but the way those wistful verses work up to a huge rapidfire chorus is just fantastic.

5. Toby Keith - "Drinks After Work"
#17 Country Airplay
Toby Keith is probably the most relentlessly prolific hitmaker in modern country who writes most of his own songs, practically on an R. Kelly level of consistency and longevity. But he hasn't been knocking 'em out of the park as much as he used to, so it's not surprising that his latest moderate hit was written by the same team (Natalie Hemby, Luke Laird and Barry Dean) that penned one of the biggest and best hits of 2012, Little Big Town's "Pontoon." It's still right in Toby's wheelhouse in that it's his 5th consecutive alcohol-themed single, but it's also kind of unique in that it casts him not as beer-swillin' middle-aged Toby or someone like him but as some kind of white collar office drone with a crush on a co-worker. Still, the melody fits his voice like a glove and the whole thing is just a joy to listen to.

6. Little Big Town - "Tornado"
#2 Country Airplay, #51 Hot 100
Natalie Hemby of "Pontoon" fame also co-wrote this one, which manages to have a pretty similar sound except this whole dark maneater noir tone to it instead of another beach party, which is kind of a cool way to build on the success of the previous song without it being an outright sequel. The follow-up single "Your Side Of The Bed" was really good, too.

7. Blake Shelton - "Mind Would Be You"
#1 Country Airplay, #28 Hot 100
Both this and Kip Moore's pleasant but slight "Hey Pretty Girl" are ballads with verses in a 7/8 time signature (I also recently noticed a similar structure, weirdly, in Lee Ann Womack's theme song for the "Berenstain Bears" cartoon when watching TV with my son). Having long been obsessed with non-standard time signatures as a drummer and mostly hearing them in jazz and rock music, now I'm kind of fascinated by whether there've been a lot of country songs like this over the years and I just didn't know.

8. Kacey Musgraves - "Blowin' Smoke"
#23 Country Airplay
Same Trailer Different Park is my favorite country album of the year, one of my favorites in any genre, partly because Musgraves just unflinchingly stares down all these aspects of small town working class life that are ugly or bleak or desperate or sad, instead of romanticizing it all as the endless country boy summer you hear on radio most of the time. And "Blowing Smoke" is great because it's the album's uptempo rocker that feels even dryer and more brittle and burnt out than the other songs, approaching some kind of yeehaw Gretchen Wilson singalong bridge with the wage slave refrain of "We all say that we'll quit one day/ when are nerves aren't shot and our hands don't shake." There's a DJ on my local country station who uses this 'random diner sound effects' background noise when he's talking a lot of the time, and this year it really drove me nuts making me think he was about to play "Blowin' Smoke" all the time, which was annoying because radio really did not play "Blowin' Smoke" enough, even compared to Kacey's breakthrough hit "Merry Go Round" the year before.

9. Taylor Swift - "Red"
#8 Country Airplay. #6 Hot 100
Taylor Swift is a pretty polarizing superstar -- most people seem to either love her or hate her. I've always been kind of ambivalent, finding her material great sometimes and terrible at other times. Red was the album were she finally willingly released some singles directly aimed at pop radio that country radio could never play, leaving stations that were so-so on the country mix of "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" to focus on the ballad "Begin Again" and the title track, which I've really grown to love in the last few months. My favorite Taylor Swift songs tend to be the ones that are basically propulsive power pop songs like "The Story of Us" or "You Belong With Me," so this is right in keeping with that.

10. Hunter Hayes - "I Want Crazy"
#2 Country Airplay, #19 Hot 100
Hunter Hayes vaguely seems like the country industry's attempt to mint a male Taylor Swift, which is enough to make me skeptical off the bat, but this new single from the deluxe edition of his 2011 album won me over big time. Love the way the pre-chorus just surges with all this energy and these snare fills that just kill me, and then it tightens up for the actual chorus.

11. Gary Allan - "Every Storm (Runs Out Of Rain)"
#1 Country Airplay, #26 Hot 100
Gary Allan does these kinds of weathered, wizened songs better than anybody in country these days, I loved the follow-up single "Pieces" too although it was barely a blip on the charts by comparison. The whole Set You Free album is pretty solid.

12. The Band Perry - "DONE."
#1 Country Airplay, #43 Hot 100
The breakup song as a taunting playground chant, running the rejection into the ground with a "la di da" on top of it all, and probably the hardest rocking song on country radio this year. That moment when the music stops and Kimberly Perry just grunts with exasperation and disgust is just so killer. Those sexy hobbits in The Band Perry sure made some great songs this year, the whole Pioneer album is great and the current single "Don't Let Me Be Lonely" almost made this list too but I wasn't ready to give anybody 3 spots on the list.

13. Kelly Clarkson f/ Vince Gill - "Don't Rush"
#27 Country Airplay, #87 Hot 100
Kelly Clarkson's slow, gradual drift towards country music has, frankly, not happened quickly enough for my liking -- a Reba or Jason Aldean duet here, a half-assed country mix of "Mr. Know-It-All" there but not a whole album of country, which she'd probably be great at. But her greatest hits collection featured this great Vince Gill duet which wasn't even so much twangy as just kind of a sumptuous retro easy listening duet with two great voices who can pull it off.

14. Cassadee Pope - "Wasting All These Tears"
#12 Country Airplay, #37 Hot 100
"The Voice" may be competitive with "American Idol" in the ratings, but they've just never been able to launch any real stars into pop music. So maybe it was a good idea for the latest champ, Cassadee Pope of the emo band Hey Monday, to gear her career towards country around the time she won "The Voice"; after all, "Idol" also-rans like Kellie Pickler and Josh Gracin have had good careers in country, to say nothing of Clarkson's dabblings. And sure enough, Pope's first original country single (after a pretty lousy Faith Hill cover for "The Voice") has been steadily climbing the charts lately.

15. Justin Moore - "Point At You"
#2 Country Airplay, #53 Hot 100
Last year, Justin Bieber's dubstep hit "As Long As You Love Me" featured Big Sean saying incredibly corny things like "ask me what's my best side, I stand back and point at you." This sounds like some Nashville topliners were jamming Bieber and decided to turn that line into a country song. In fact, I'd like to think that's exactly what happened. Moore is one of my favorite voices out of the bland, crowded pack of new male country stars, though, he can pull it off.

16. Eli Young Band - "Drunk Last Night"
#4 Country Airplay, #44 Hot 100
You might assume the Eli Young Band is led by a guy named Eli Young, and that's pretty much what I figured last year when I loved their single "Even If It Breaks Your Heart." But upon closer inspection, after really enjoying a second single by them, I learned that one guy's last name is Eli and the other guy's last name is Young. The more you know.

17. Randy Houser - "Runnin' Outta Moonlight"
#1 Country Airplay, #24 Hot 100
The standard cliche that country music is full of songs about trucks isn't entirely untrue, but lately it's been a more nebulous word cloud of things like barefoot Friday nights under the stars or whatever, and this is one of the few songs in that vein that really worked well for me.

18. George Strait - "Give It All We Got Tonight"
#2 Country Airplay, #43 Hot 100
George Strait holds all sorts of unbreakable records for the most hits on the country charts and most #1s and so on (although his run of #1s has probably been forcibly ended by Billboard's new download-driven metrics for the main Country Songs chart -- this #2 Airplay hit only got to #7 on the main chart). Still, his longevity and productivity is just this totally accepted thing, and he can still make hits without really trying to sound too modern, which is pretty cool, he's probably the only '80s star who can regularly get a new song into rotation, and increasingly there are only a few '90s stars either.

19. Brad Paisley - "Beat This Summer"
#2 Country Airplay, #46 Hot 100
When this song was released in the spring, it felt like it was waiting for summer to come along. But now that summer is long tone, it feels more perfectly bittersweet, reveling in how that moment has now totally passed. It was also one of those songs where the vaguely post-hip hop loops buried in the mix should've totally marked it as some slick, desperate pop country move but it just sounded so good it didn't matter.

20. Tim McGraw f/ Taylor Swift and Keith Urban - "Highway Don't Care"
#1 Country Airplay, #22 Hot 100
Taylor Swift's first hit was named after Tim McGraw as a shorthand for her favorite song, so there's some nice thematic unity to McGraw casting Swift as the disembodied voice on the radio for his his song (with a gratuitous guitar solo by Keith Urban for good measure). Increasingly, I haven't been able to stand Tim McGraw's voice much at all (his other big single this year, "Southern Girl," oof), so really just being able to enjoy this is a small miracle.

Bonus bile:
The 10 Worst Country Radio Hits of 2013
1. Blake Shelton - "Boys 'Round Here"
2. Luke Bryan - "Crash My Party"
3. Lee Brice - "Parking Lot Party"
4. Florida Georgia Line - "Get Your Shine On"
5. Eric Church - "The Outsiders"
6. Lady Antebellum - "Downtown"
7. Tyler Farr - "Redneck Crazy"
8. Chris Young - "Aw Naw"
9. Easton Corbin - "All Over The Road"
10. Joe Nichols - "Sunny And 75"

a) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
I took my wife to see this, as I did with the first movie, because she's a fan of the books, and as with the first movie, we both enjoyed it though I don't know the source material at all. This one was definitely a major improvement on the previous movie, though -- better director and, really, just a more interesting story this time around, I really didn't know where it was headed the whole time and thought they found a decent way of creating an arc that didn't directly mimic the first one too much. The story is a little ridiculous in parts, but the cast feels like a strong ensemble now, Donald Sutherland and Philip Seymour Hoffman were great and didn't feel like they were operating on a higher level than the movie.

b) Gravity
One day I had two jobs in D.C. a few hours apart, so instead of going home for some downtime, I had a beer with lunch and then went to a matinee to see Gravity on a 3D screen. And it was pretty much one of the most memorable theatergoing experiences of my life. My heart raced, towards the end I cried a little (in my defense I was really low on sleep and, remember, had a beer with lunch. If I had any kind of fear of space or vertigo or something, though, man, this would've made me sick. I loved how the whole thing was pretty much in real time and never let up and there was just enough of a story and an emotional center for it to hit me pretty hard (if you've seen the movie: my kid is four years old).

c) Comedy Warriors: Healing Through Humor
Really fascinating documentary about wounded veterans who want to be standup comics getting training from real comics like Lewis Black and Zach Galifaniakis. All the folks in the movie were just so likeable and had been so much and actually had some funny jokes so you just root for them so much, and the comics do a good job of treating them like peers and giving them real advice and not handling them with kid gloves. There's a guy with incredibly severe burns who just gets in front of these huge crowds and wins them over and puts them at ease with genuinely funny material about his situation, it's glorious to see.

d) Beautiful Creatures
Decent sub-Hunger Games young adult novel adaptation that starts of promising with the guy's first person narration showing a good sense of humor and storytelling tone, but soon it kind of abandon's his perspective and gets a little blander. But it has Emmy Rossum being a hot promiscuous witch and Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson having some goofy fun slumming, so it's not bad overall.

e) The Identity Thief
This wasn't outright terrible but it was pretty rough. A couple scenes where Jason Bateman was a good foil for Melissa McCarthy but for the most part neither of them were at the best and at this point I don't know what Bateman can even do besides the same character in every movie, he's kinda terrible.

f) Brave
Not my favorite Pixar flick but pretty excellent as usual. It's weird to watch a cartoon with an adolescent character voiced by Kelly Macdonald, though, since she has probably the most attractive female voice in the world to me.

Here's The Short List I write every week for the City Paper of all the cool shows going on in Baltimore, although in this case of course I left out the show I'm playing.

On Wednesday, December 11th, my band Western Blot is playing Club K. Also on the bill is Mink Hollow, a new band featuring my old friend Austin Stahl (Private Eleanor, Small Sur), and a band I'm really looking forward to hear live called Yellow North that seems very cool. We haven't played in a few months and it should be fun to get in one more show before the end of the year and I finally get ready to put out the album in 2014. Here's the Facebook event for the show.

I started doing these year-end lists by radio format last year, and the 2012 rock list ended up being a good chance to sum up what was kind of a big year for alt-rock radio. After years of decreasing commercial prominence or influence on the pop charts, the fluke-like 2011 success of Foster The People ended up giving way to a flood of the biggest songs to cross over from rock radio to Top 40 in a long time: Gotye, fun., The Lumineers, Alex Clare, Grouplove, and so on. In 2013, that just kept on happening, with songs by Lorde, Imagine Dragons, Capital Cities, and weirdly, Avicii starting as hits on the rock charts and then getting major traction on the Hot 100 (while rock radio also picked up on pop hits by Daft Punk and Macklemore). Even AWOLNATION's "Sail," which dominated rock radio in 2011 (around the same time as "Pumped Up Kicks") without reaching higher than #80 on the Hot 100, came back as a viral video hit and finally became a multiplatinum Top 20 hit with pop airplay in 2013. That's not to say I thought the pop crossover hits were necessarily the best songs on rock radio this year; in fact a lot of them are in the 'worst' list at the bottom of this post.

Nonetheless, it's a relatively interesting time for a depleted and widely deplored radio format. The indie/Pitchfork-friendly bands that have crossed over to radio to varying degrees in recent years didn't score big on mainstream radio with their new singles this year (The Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend, Phoenix, etc.), meanwhile Alex Clare's "Too Close" kicked the door open for more songs to marry mewling folky old man vocals to EDM beats like "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons and "Wake Me Up!" by Avicii. And while there are a few '90s dinosaurs still roaming the earth, the ones that had hits this year didn't rule rock radio with an iron first the way the Foo Fighters, RHCP and Green Day had for most of the past decade. Amidst all of that, there were a lot of newish acts that fit into none of the above categories, from which I ended up drawing most of this list. There wasn't much of a coherent sound in 2013, and I have no idea which ones will continue to be in the mix in 2014 and which ones will disappear, which is about as optimistic a forecast as I can give -- with the other major radio formats, it seems much more obvious what trends aren't going anyway anytime soon. As with the R&B list, I'm using chart placements from the Rock Airplay chart, since Billboard's changes to the main Rock Songs chart in 2012 have made it dominated mainly by streams and downloads of new and old songs by the biggest crossover artists, some of whom don't get played on rock radio at all to begin with.

Here's the Spotify playlist of my favorite rock and alternative radio hits of the year:

1. The Neighbourhood - "Sweater Weather"
#1 Alternative Songs, #3 Rock Airplay, #17 Hot 100
I haven't watched the video, I haven't listened to the album or even the follow-up single, I haven't read anything about The Neighbourhood to know what part of America or some other country they're from or if they have any kind of backstory, if it's a real band or just one guy. I guess that's the mentality that keeps some acts a 'one hit wonder' no matter how much you really enjoyed that one song, but sometimes it's nice to just have the song to enjoy by itself, with no context other than how it sounds on the radio. It dominated rock radio all summer, when it was kind of ironically the wrong season for it, and then in the last month or two crossed over to pop radio, when it finally was sweater weather (albeit with a terrible drum machine track added into the Top 40 mix, much like what happened to Gotye). Love how it's split up into two halves that are in completely different tempos, but it winds back around to that big chorus in a way that makes perfect sense.

2. Pearl Jam - "Mind Your Manners" 
#12 Alternative Songs, #6 Rock Airplay
If I can enjoy something like The Neighbourhood's song in a relative vacuum, then the opposite is the case with a new single by Pearl Jam in the year 2013. I recently declared them my favorite singles act of the 1990s, but I can count on one hand the singles they've released since the '90s that I particularly like. This one is just a beast, though; not a revelation like 2009's uncharacteristically peppy "The Fixer," and awfully easy to

3. Muse - "Panic Station"
#2 Alternative Songs, #6 Rock Airplay
I liked Muse's 2012 single "Madness," which also occupied the same spot on last year's list, but it was overplayed to a pretty incredible degree. When the Alternative chart turned 25 this year, Billboard ran a list of the top 100 songs in the chart's history, the "Madness" was ludicrously right there in third place for the whole list, with another pretty recent Muse song at the top of the list. "Panic Station" wasn't so ubiquitous, but it was easily one of the more entertaining singles yet from modern rock's most shamelessly derivative superstars. They never shied away from sounding exactly like Radiohead or Queen, and here they throw together a joyfully tacky slap bass '80s funk rock Faith No More/Power Station jock jam.

4. Fall Out Boy - "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light 'Em Up)"
#7 Alternative Songs, #8 Rock Airplay, #13 Hot 100
Fall Out Boy surprised me again and again in 2013 -- a year ago I didn't expect they would surface with a new album anytime soon, and if they did, I figured they'd continue to slip from both rock and pop radio as they'd been doing ever since the "Sugar, We're Going Down" days. And when I heard "My Songs" and registered my initial reactions, I figured this big, goofy tongue-in-cheek comeback anthem would be just a teaser, not one of the biggest multi-format hits of their career. And I certainly didn't expect to hear them make a hardcore punk EP produced by Ryan Adams, or to be tweeted at by Pete Wentz.

5. Frank Turner - "Recovery"
#16 Alternative Songs, #23 Rock Airplay
This British folksy guy is, I dunno, I guess some kind of Billy Bragg for the jam band set, which unsurprisingly makes him disproportionately popular in the Washington area, so the local station DC101 just latched onto this song way more than other markets and played the hell out of it all year, until I started to regard it as an overwhelmingly catchy offbrand Ted Leo anthem.

6. Silversun Pickups - "The Pit"
#3 Alternative Songs, #11 Rock Airplay
Silversun Pickups are an odd case because they're pretty much the most successful band on alt-rock radio that records for an actual independent label in recent memory, if not of all time, but they're not considered aesthetically 'indie.' I've never particularly loved them myself, but they've shown signs of having a little versatility on their recent singles, and this one has kind of a cool Depeche Mode/spaghetti western atmosphere to it.

7. Atlas Genius - "If So"
#8 Alternative Songs, #13 Rock Airplay
One of alt-rock's big breakthrough bands of the year was Atlas Genius, although I hated their big lead single "Trojans." Instead, it was the slightly less successful follow-up that won me over, particularly for the synth riff in the bridge that felt like it could've been the basis for a whole other hit song.

8. KoRn - "Never Never"
#1 Mainstream Rock Tracks, #36 Alternative Songs, #13 Rock Airplay
You know how weird it is that I enjoy a new KoRn song in 2013? I didn't even like them that much in the '90s when they were kind of unique and hugely popular, but this is easily my favorite thing they've done since "Falling Away From Me," and also probably their most brazenly melodic and accessible thing since then, too. And it's their first single since with "Head," the creepy born again Christian who left the band a decade ago, has rejoined his brothers "Munky" and "Fieldy," so hey, good for them. You'll note, though, that for any of the songs on this list that topped Billboard's Mainstream Rock charts peaked much lower on the overall Rock Airplay chart, which is more dominated by alternative hits -- this was not the case even a couple years ago, but so-called "mainstream rock" has finally taken a distant backseat to so-called "alternative rock" in commercial terms, which of course has been kind of a running joke in the '90s that finally came true.

9. Devour The Day - "Good Man"
#33 Rock Airplay
This is the kind of lunkhead active rock that is slowly dying out on the radio (except for the actively terrible Avenged Sevenfold, who are now bona fide arena headliners). Most would say 'good riddance,' but I enjoy this kind of stuff now and again, and this song really caught my ear this year, has a nice crunchy sound, a huge hook, and a cool tempo change towards the end.

10. Nine Inch Nails - "Came Back Haunted"
#6 Mainstream Rock Tracks, #7 Alternative Songs, #6 Rock Airplay
NIN was ostensibly the biggest comeback story of mainstream alternarock this year. But as a fan of later singles like "Discipline" and "The Hand That Feeds" who thought they pretty much went out on top as of their last hiatus, this song never entirely measured up. It's catchy and all, and it's amusingly meta for Trent Reznor to throw a synth he hasn't used since Pretty Hate Machine into the mix on this song, but I'm really hoping the atypically upbeat "Everything" is a big radio hit soon.

11. Paramore - "Now"
#13 Alternative Songs, #26 Rock Airplay
Paramore is my favorite rock album of the year, but I didn't expect that at all when I heard its lead single, "Now," which seemed to continue the band's recent pattern of catering to rock radio with tracks that were aggressive and uptempo ("Ignorance," "Monster," "Brick By Boring Brick") without the kind of massive pop punk hooks of "Misery Business" that broke them through in the first place. In the end, the album spawned a bigger hit on pop radio in "Still Into You" and "Now" was quickly forgotten by rock radio, but the song ended up growing on me big time, particularly in the context of the album.

12. Fitz And The Tantrums - "Out Of My League"
#1 Alternative Songs, #1 Rock Airplay
These guys are some kind of half-assed retro soul group, whose single "MoneyGrabber" a couple years ago was a low key VH1 jam. This year, they released a single that sounded more like a generic indie pop song any number of bands could've released, but a decent one, and it paid off: it set a new record for the longest climb to #1 in the history of the Alternative Songs chart.

13. Beware of Darkness - "Howl"
#4 Active Rock Songs, #6 Mainstream Rock Tracks
The whole bombastic blooz rock baby Zep sound that the White Stripes made big on rock radio and which continued which all sorts of crap bands like Wolfmother got shine off of has mostly petered out, especially with the Black Keys blowing up mainly by going a more timid route. But this song was pretty cool and explosive anytime my local active rock station, Baltimore's 98 Rock, played it, which ended up being pretty often.

14. The Deftones - "Tempest"
#3 Mainstream Rock Tracks, #20 Alternative Songs, #13 Rock Airplay
I've never been as big a proponent of The Deftones as the hip/acceptable nu metal band as a lot of people -- I am found of saying that Chi Moreno sings like Ellen Degeneres talking to whales in Finding Nemo. But this song (their biggest radio hit since "Change") and the follow-up "Swerve City" were welcome anytime I caught them on the radio this year.

15. alt-J - "Breezeblocks"
#9 Alternative Songs, #26 Rock Airplay
When a buzz band from England, still the buzz band capitol of the world, crosses the pond and gets some U.S. radio airplay, I generally expect either shameless, undeniable Coldplay pop smarts or something so obnoxiously British I just can't stand it. But when I started hearing this on the radio, after vaguely being aware of people being annoyed with a band called alt-J for a while, I was surprised that this odd band that sounded like Les Claypool mumbling over toy instruments was British at all, much less massively popular anywhere.

16. Kings Of Leon - "Supersoaker"
#9 Alternative Songs, #8 Rock Airplay
Their commercial triumphs, first in the U.K. and then at home in America, were terrifying at the time. But now that Kings Of Leon are underperforming with one of their most palatable singles to date, they don't seem so scary anymore.

17. Portugal. The Man - "Purple Yellow Red And Blue"
#15 Alternative Songs, #27 Rock Airplay
One of my favorite Radio Hits One columns I did for the Voice a couple years ago was about the sudden ubiquity of ____ The ____ bands on alt-rock radio: Foster The People, Cage The Elephant, Young The Giant, and so on. And now that they've had a few hits, this one being their biggest to date, I can now add Portland-based psych rock band Portugal. The Man to the list. I have no idea what this song is about, even to a greater degree that I could say about most of these songs, but man it's catchy.

18. Halestorm - "Freak Like Me"
#1 Active Rock, #1 Mainstream Rock, #17 Rock Airplay
Their two major label albums have yielded 9 singles on the rock charts, more than half of them pretty significant 'mainstream'/'active' rock hits, making Halestorm one of the few newish hard rock bands that seem to have a lot gas in the tank, and certainly the only female-fronted one. I'm fond of saying they remind me of Crucial Taunt from Wayne's World, but I mean that more affectionately than as a bad thing, although I have much more mixed feelings about their best recent hit being titled "Freak Like Me" while having nothing to do with Adina Howard.

19. Alice In Chains - "Hollow"
#1 Mainstream Rock Tracks, #23 Alternative Songs, #10 Rock Airplay
Although there's something unsavory and Sublime With Rome-ish about Alice In Chains rebooting without Layne Staley, even given Jerry Cantrell's status as the band's true auteur and occasional lead vocalist, their reunion has been pretty consistent, at least from a singles standpoint, this and "Check My Brain" both jam.

20. Soundgarden - "By Crooked Steps"
#1 Mainstream Rock Tracks, #17 Rock Airplay
Since Soundgarden had, in my opinion, the highest peaks of all the Seattle grunge titans, and are the one I'd most often wished never broke up, their underwhelming reunion has been a bitter reality check for me. Alice In Chains, a band I like half as much that has only half of its classic lineup intact, has made better singles lately than Soundgarden. But this song, an unforgiving 5/4 chug, was at least a slight redemption following blandness like "Live To Rise" and "Been Away Too Long."

Bonus bile:
The 10 Worst Rock/Alternative Radio Hits of 2013
1. Imagine Dragons - "Radioactive"
2. Avicii - "Wake Me Up!"
3. Bastille - "Pompeii"
4. New Politics - "Harlem"
5. Avenged Sevenfold - "Hail To The King"
6. Lorde - "Royals"
7. Atlas - "Trojans"
8. Capital Cities - "Safe And Sound"
9. Stone Temple Pilots with Chester Bennington - "Out Of Time"
10. Of Monsters And Men - "Mountain Sound"

When I did this list last year, there was a lot of hype about 2012 being some kind of special year for R&B, because critics were more excited about Frank Ocean and Miguel and "Climax" than they typically would be about singers that get played on urban radio. It was a great year, but the nonsense about 'alt R&B' was off-putting to me, and mostly made me wary that about any sudden dilettante enthusiasm for the genre not carrying over into the next year even if there was still a lot of great R&B music coming out. So 2013 was just another year, but in the good sense that it was yet another year that it wasn't hard to find some great singing and songwriting in R&B, even the stuff on the radio, which is about as diverse as it's ever been.

I'm doing 5 of these lists, as I did in 2012 (for R&B, rap, country, rock and pop), and the 'radio hits' component is important to me because I think there's still a lot to be said for getting in your car, turning on the radio, and hearing how these genres are represented on the airwaves, for better and for worse, on a daily basis. I'm also making a point of listing chart peaks from Billboard's airplay-only charts, because, as I wrote about extensively last year, Billboard has changed how their charts work to privilege downloading and streams over radio spins. Which might sound like a hip and modern thing to do, but for instance, compare the main Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart (which on any given week is usually half Justin/Robin/Eminem/Macklemore) with the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, and I feel like the problems are self-evident.

Anyway, here's the Spotify playlist of my favorite R&B radio hits of 2013:

1. Fantasia f/ Kelly Rowland and Missy Elliott - "Without Me"
#6 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #74 Hot 100
Side Effects Of You is my favorite R&B album of the year, largely because of how producer Harmony "H-Money" Samuels, who did all but one track, approaches Fantasia's voice from every angle you might want to hear it from, both expected and unexpected. In the latter category is this seething, imperious kiss-off, something like "Irreplaceable" with all of the vulnerability and tact drained out, over the kind of vaguely retro woodblock melody that seems to pop up on an urban radio hit about once a year lately (previously in "Beemer, Benz Or Bentley" and "Beez In The Trap"). It's hard to tell if Missy Elliott's co-writing credit is just for her brief but perfect rap verse, or if the whole song came out of her head, but I would like to think it's the latter, since it reminds me of some of the awesome underrated R&B deep cuts on her old albums.

2. Tamar Braxton - "Love And War"
#2 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #57 Hot 100
One of my favorite things that I wrote in 2013 was this Tamar Braxton/K. Michelle album review, which touched on both the stardom vacuum for women on R&B radio in the last few male-dominated years, and how those two women used reality TV as a launching pad to become this year's unlikely breakout stars. When I first "Love And War," I liked it, but it seemed doomed because a more established star, Keyshia Cole, already had a similar-sounding single out with the same producer, DJ Camper. Instead, Keyshia's "Trust And Believe" peaked outside the top 10 and disappeared, while "Love And War" dominated the airwaves for months. And man, this song deserved it -- just so perfectly paced, so much emotion packed into 4 minutes, Tamar finally, instantly proving herself a true peer to her sister as a vocalist, not just a sibling riding coattails.

3. Robin Thicke f/ T.I. and Pharrell - "Blurred Lines"
#1 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
"Blurred Lines" was a multi-format sensation that actually took off on pop radio quicker than urban radio -- it topped the Pop Songs chart 2 weeks before it hit #1 on R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, but it stayed #1 on R&B longer overall. But it was an R&B song through and through, just like any Robin Thicke track, even while it was a huge and extremely rare crossover hit (you'd arguably have to go back about 4 years, to Beyonce's "Single Ladies," to find the last R&B song by an R&B singer played on R&B radio that topped the Hot 100, depending on how you feel about Usher's "OMG" and certain Rihanna songs). For all the hoopla about the song being a nakedly obvious homage to Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up," what got lost in the shuffle and the lawsuits is that it's entirely its own song -- it has its own groove and tempo, its own lyrics, its own melodies and vocal cadences that borrow nothing from the Marvin classic but the texture and vibe.

4. Rihanna f/ Future - "Loveeeeeee Song"
#4 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #55 Hot 100
Speaking of Rihanna, she may be the only singer who consistently gets played on both pop radio and R&B radio, but where songs like "Umbrella" and "Rude Boy" used to straddle formats, now she mostly makes different songs for different stations. This year, "Stay" dominated pop radio, she had two simultaneous urban radio hits, each with half of the Future/Mike WiLL Made It tandem that took over rap radio in 2012. Mike WiLL's "Pour It Up" was a fun but flimsy retread of the "Bandz A Make Her Dance" beat, but Future wrote and co-produced a truly unique duet for Rihanna in "Loveeeeeee Song," which was reportedly given its wonderful, ridiculous title by Jay-Z himself. Really one of Rih's greatest vocal performances ever, too. Future's made a lot of disarmingly vulnerable songs in the last couple years, but this might be the one that really hits me the deepest, just laying out his emotional needs in the plainest terms possible. Ain't nothin' wrong with it.

5. Ciara - "Body Party"
#2 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #22 Hot 100
When Ciara announced that her next single sampled "My Boo" by Ghost Town DJ's, and was co-written by her current boo Future, it felt almost a little too perfect as the predestined comeback hit she'd been desperately searching for in the protracted run-up to the album previously known as One Woman Army. Thankfully, the resulting song was not merely a stroll through 1996 nostalgia, but a gorgeous, sensual slow jam that touches on the side of Ciara that she revealed on the classic "Promise" without rewriting it, all the while letting Future hit the highest of the high notes in his incredible backing vocals.

6. K. Michelle - "V.S.O.P."
#7 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #89 Hot 100
If K. Michelle never topped her minor, forgettable circa 2010 hits and just became famous off of reality TV and social media fuckery, it wouldn't be a surprising or unusual career arc in this day and age. But she managed to parlay that publicity into a ridiculous banger that fits her image and personality while also showcasing her incredible voice and her ability to yowl things like "HISTRAAAY," all while Pop & Oak (who did Elle Varner's "Refill" on last year's list) demolish a Chi-Lites sample that once but no longer existed in modern memory banks as part of an aight Jay-Z song.

7. Alicia Keys f/ Maxwell - "Fire We Make"
#15 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay
When Maxwell came out of a long hiatus/hibernation in 2009 for the amazing BLACKsummers'night, he said it'd be the first of 3 albums that'd be released back to back. Four years later, all we've had since then is a snippet of the lead single for the 2nd one, and this duet where he upstaged Alicia Keys on her own album, with sumptuous production by, once again, Pop & Oak and a crackling guitar solo by Gary Clarke, Jr. It immediately spurred talk of Maxwell and Alicia releasing a whole EP of duets, but I'm not holding my breath.

8. Mariah Carey f/ Miguel - "#Beautiful"
#30 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #15 Hot 100
When Miguel's last album hit, news almost immediately started swirling of him getting in the studio with superstars like Beyonce and Mariah. The former has yet to come out of the woodwork with a Miguel collaboration, but Mariah made hers the lead single (or I guess second single, after that forgettable Ross/Meek track) for her next album. We haven't heard that album yet, mainly because "Beautiful" was maybe too much of a curveball, Miguel toying with the guitar-driven sound of Kaleidoscope Dream's deep cuts, for the song to

9. Sevyn Streeter - "I Like It"
#19 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay
This song didn't blow up as big as the next single she released, and it's not even on the EP she just put out, but "I Like It" was a hell of a calling card, both for Sevyn Streeter and for the producer, Harmony "H-Money," who soon after began racking up several other of my favorite songs this year. In a year when very little had that kind of frantic early Timbaland propulsion, including Timbaland's recent productions, it was refreshing every time to hear the synths and drums of "I Like It" careening towards that huge chorus.

10. Kelly Rowland - "Kisses Down Low"
#11 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #72 Hot 100
I'm a little mad that this actually fell a little short of the horrid previous single, "Ice," which hit #10 on the airplay chart, because seriously isn't "Kisses Down Low" about a hundred times better? Sure, rewriting the chorus to T.I.'s "Top Down" to be about cunnilingus is kind of funny, but it's about the only idea Rock City had this year that didn't cause me misery since they also wrote Miley's "We Can't Stop," Rihanna's "Pour It Up" and Ciara's "I'm Out." What really makes "Kisses Down Low" great, though, is one of Mike WiLL Made It's most expansive, ambitious productions to date, a music box symphony full of interlocking sections and epic build-ups and pre-choruses.

11. Mario f/ Nicki Minaj - "Somebody Else"
#21 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay
Baltimore's own super Mario brother of the R&B game didn't come back as big this year as he's done with lead singles for his previous albums, which means he's currently back to the drawing board with follow-up singles. But this one banged hard, with one of Nicki's rare 'serious' verses that wasn't completely bland and terrible. "Somebody Else" was also something of a comeback for Polow Da Don, who hasn't done much of anything of note in a while, after years of consistently producing classic R&B tracks.

12. T-Rone - "Hello Love (F.U.)"
#39 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay
Lately there seems to be a small army of 'street' R&B dudes angling around the periphery of the charts like Ty Dolla $ign and Teeflii and T.Rone, who, maybe because their names all start with T, feel like more rugged and less AutoTuned post-T-Pain types (or maybe less artsy post-The Weeknd types?). In general, I don't really like this stuff, these guys mostly strike me as untalented sleazeballs, but I love T.Rone's breakout single, which during its brief chart run in the spring got him signed to Cash Money and spawned a worthless posse cut rap remix, but never got as far on the charts as I hoped it would.

13. Mack Wilds - "Own It"
#23 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay
When a rapper gets on the radio with some dusty breakbeats that recall hip-hop's first decade, it raises all sorts of "back in the day" conversations and mostly becomes the object of handwringing about how things have changed. When an R&B record that sounds like that gets on the radio, though, it feels more apolitical and warmly nostalgic, a celebration of the sound more than anything else. The most recent record to pop off on R&B radio with an "Impeach The President" break, surprisingly, is by one of the kids from the 4th season of The Wire, and it's still climbing the charts right now but it feels like its buzz is big enough to justify slipping on the list.

14. Chris Brown - "Fine China"
#8 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #31 Hot 100
Although he wasn't as ubiquitous in 2013 as he was for the previous couple years, Chris Brown continues in spite of everything, and perhaps a little because of it, to be one of R&B radio's increasingly rare sure things. And he keeps occasionally making jams that may not excuse anything, but certainly make his ubiquity more tolerable. Sure it'd be nice if his best song this year didn't compare a woman to a very beautiful and very breakable object, and it'd be nice if he didn't struggle so hard with the high notes on the pre-chorus. I wish someone else made a hit that sounded like this in 2013, but nobody did, so props to Chris, I guess.

15. Sevyn Streeter f/ Chris Brown - "It Won't Stop (Remix)"
#2 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #46 Hot 100
Chris's presence was less welcome on "It Won't Stop," which sounded just fine as a Sevyn Streeter solo track for a few months before he hopped on it and made it a bigger hit. But hey, if I can deal with Diplo having produced this, I can deal with Chris singing on it too.

16. Miguel f/ Kendrick Lamar - "How Many Drinks? (Remix)"
#3 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #69 Hot 100
Much like Chris Brown's addition to "It Won't Stop" made it a worse but more popular song, the remix to "How Many Drinks?" was a brilliant bit of synchronicity for two L.A.-based artists who'd just come off having big breakthrough years that didn't necessarily make great musical sense. Not that Miguel's awkward "let me dig that out like a fossil/ damn baby, that ass is colossal" bridge was that too good to drop, but the Kendrick verse that replaced it falls a little flat. Still a dope song, though, and the closest thing Kaleidoscope Dream had to an "Adorn" soundalike, which was a good thing to have ready after the fantastic "Do You..." went a little too far left and never quite took off on radio.

17. Raheem DeVaughn - "Love Connection"
#35 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay
With Miguel only kinda-sorta having more songs like "Adorn" and not being in a rush to spin it off into a formula, he left the field open for others to try and xerox it, with Washington, D.C. hometown hero and major label refugee Raheem DeVaughn making struggle R&B's first transparent "Adorn" knockoff. It actually turned out pretty catchy, though, easily one of his better singles in an uneven career.

18. Drake f/ Majid Jordan - "Hold On, We're Going Home"
#1 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #5 Hot 100
A few months later, Drake did his "Adorn, I Want My Own" almost as shamelessly as Raheem. And while I thought the bitemarks he left on his opening act's biggest single were a little too obvious, this song functioned as a successful R&B track better overall than previous 808s & Heartbreak karaoke cuts like "Find Your Love."

19. Justin Timberlake f/ Jay-Z - "Suit & Tie"
#6 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #3 Hot 100
"Suit & Tie" was the disappointing kickoff to Timberlake's monumentally disappointing 2013. But now that he's spent the entire year dropping successively worse singles, and we're no longer laboring under the "oh the second single will better...oh the second album will be better" delusions, I think we can go back and give this one credit for being dope for what it is. It always cracked me up how often DJs would fast forward straight past that intro, though.

20. Eric Benet - "News For You"
#22 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay
I'm a bigger fan than most of the kind of 'adult' R&B stations geared towards older listeners that mainly focus on '80s classics along with new songs by established stars (usually downtempo, or at least as blatantly retro as "Blurred Lines"). And this year I enjoyed a lot of hits from those formats, by Chrisette Michelle, Charlie Wilson, Toni Braxton & Babyface, Charlie Wilson, etc. But most of all, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this track from Eric Benet, who I'd previously mostly regarded as the Lyle Lovett of R&B, respected for his music but mostly known for his past marriage to an A-list actress. The track has an almost Steely Dan-level slickness, but the remix with 2 Chainz is actually almost as good as the original, without stretching Benet too far out of his comfort zone.

Bonus bile:
The 10 Worst R&B Hits of 2013
1. R. Kelly f/ 2 Chainz - "My Story"
2. Tamar Braxton - "The One"
3. Jonn Hart f/ French Montana - "Who Booty"
4. Chris Brown f/ Nicki Minaj - "Love More"
5. August Alsina f/ Trinidad James - "I Luv This Shit"
6. Rihanna - "Pour It Up"
7. Sean Kingston f/ Chris Brown and Wiz Khalifa - "Beat It"
8. John Legend f/ Rick Ross - "Who Do We Think We Are"
9. Jeremih f/ Lil Wayne and Natasha Mosley - "All The Time (Remix)"
10. The-Dream f/ Fabolous - "Slow It Down"

I wrote "How To Make The Perfect Mixtape In The Digital Age" for Complex Magazine.

This week's Short List. Happy Thanksgiving!

A couple weeks ago, I finished my year-by-year overview of the '90s with my 50 favorite albums and 100 favorite singles of 1990. Having done that for every year of the decade, I now have about 500 albums and 1000 singles to draw from if I do some kind of big '90s list somewhere down the line, maybe next year. In the meantime, I thought I'd do something extra nerdy and crunch the numbers from all that data and try to figure out who my favorite artists of the decade were, not based on any gut feeling but just on the sheer math of who had the most records ranked highest on those lists. Rather than trying to combine the data from both sets, here's two separate lists, based on albums and based on singles.

My Favorite Albums Artists of the 1990s: 

1. Superchunk
2. Sonic Youth
3. Fugazi
4. Pearl Jam
5. A Tribe Called Quest
6. 2Pac
7. The Posies
8. Jay-Z
9. Ice Cube
10. Smashing Pumpkins
11. UGK
12. Nirvana
13. Gang Starr
14. R.E.M.
15. Pulp
16. They Might Be Giants
17. Nine Inch Nails
18. Soul Coughing
19. Scarface
20. Outkast

One thing I will say is, it'd be easier to make it onto this list with less music than for a similar list for other recent decades. The 1990s was the peak of the music industry maximizing the profitability of each album, milking it for as many singles and videos and tours as possible. And in the CD era, albums got longer, so even smaller acts would tend to release a 60 or 70-minute album every 2 or 3 years rather than a 40-minute album every year or so, as was standard up through the '80s. So while I clearly love Superchunk and already called them "the best band of the 1990s," they had a big advantage here in that they released 7 albums in the decade (plus rarities comps), where pretty much every other artist there released 5 albums at most (I only count 2Pac's five albums completed in his lifetime, including the album as Makaveli, haven't checked out any of the posthumous ones).

But just releasing a good number of albums isn't everything; I weighted these by how they were ranked by year, so how much I liked stuff mattered a lot. Pavement released 5 albums, all in the '90s and all of which I own, but I've soured on that band big time since the '90s, so they weren't a factor. Soul Coughing only made 3 albums total, but they were all in the '90s and I loved them all, so they got in. Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails scraped by with only two '90s full-lengths and some non-LP releases (EPs and live/compilation/remix albums, etc.). I would never rank Sonic Youth's '90s work as much as highly as their '80s work, but they had several ranked EPs and non-album releases in addition to their 5 albums that pushed them up high, and they were certainly a really major band to me during the decade.


My Favorite Singles Artists of the 1990s: 

1. Pearl Jam
2. Jay-Z
3. Metallica
4. Notorious B.I.G.
5. Dr. Dre
6. Busta Rhymes
7. Snoop Dogg
8. R.E.M.
9. Janet Jackson
10. 2Pac
11. Mary J. Blige
12. Nirvana
13. U2
14. Nine Inch Nails
15. DMX
16. Smashing Pumpkins
17. Red Hot Chili Peppers
18. A Tribe Called Quest
19. The Black Crowes
20. Mariah Carey
21. En Vogue
22. Soundgarden
23. Puff Daddy
24. LL Cool J
25. Guns 'N Roses
26. Foo Fighters
27. Erykah Badu
28. Stone Temple Pilots
29. Juvenile
30. Bjork
31. R. Kelly
32. TLC
33. Aaliyah
34. Gang Starr
35. Ginuwine
36. Prince
37. Third Eye Blind
38. Counting Crows
39. Alice In Chains
40. Tom Petty
41. Beastie Boys
42. Ice Cube
43. Soul Coughing
44. Big Punisher
45. Sonic Youth
46. Green Day
47. They Might Be Giants
48. Rage Against The Machine
49. Lenny Kravitz
50. INXS

The singles list was more fun because, well, there was a lot more to draw from -- artists that might've only had one or two quality albums (or none) had half a dozen awesome singles, and so on. Plus it's just a much more diverse field than the "all alt-rock and rap all the time" field of the albums list. I was unsurprised by Pearl Jam's triumph -- especially since I filled the list with not just their many singles but also the several big rock radio hits they had that weren't officially released as singles. I was surprised that Jay-Z's '90s catalog edged out Biggie, although I guess even the years of the decade that Jay-Z was a star lasted a little longer than Big's whole career, after all. And with Metallica, I'm just an unapologetic fan of all The Black Album's singles and scattered later hits ("Hero Of The Day," "Fuel," "Whiskey In The Jar," etc.). I'm probably most alone in thinking The Black Crowes are one of the most consistent rock radio bands of the '90s, though.

Tabulating this one got a little dicey because of collaborations and such -- Dre and Snoop are both in the top 10 primarily from songs they did together. But for the most part I just went with my gut on how to count things. If I gave entries to individual people, Dave Grohl and Timbaland would be in the top 5, as would Q-Tip, but it didn't seem right to lump his solo singles and features on "Groove Is In The Heart" and "Got Til It's Gone" together the same way I counted Junior Mafia and Puff Daddy singles towards Biggie's total. Some artists I think should be higher, but somehow overlooked some of my favorite singles by them when assembling the year-by-year lists, but I didn't wanna go crazy with revising those just to make this list more 'right,' I think it looks like a pretty damn accurate summary of my taste as is.

Here's the yearly lists if you missed them: 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999.

"Ain't Worried About Nothin' (Remix)" by French Montana featuring Miley Cyrus or Rick Ross, Diddy and Snoop Dogg
I already covered one posse cut remix of this song in a previous installment but I guess that wasn't official, but there have since been two big name remixes of French's first real solo hit. I will give Miley credit for nailing the obvious French Montana/Hannah Montana couplet, and for changing the N-word in the chorus to "bitch," and French ended up beating Kanye to the punch to have the first rap remix with Miley, so good for them I guess. On the other remix, Diddy talking his shit upstages everyone else as usual, and Snoop always seems like he should do better on these kinds of tracks than he should, it's just not the right kind of beat for him.
Best Verse: Diddy
Overall Grade: D / C

"Gorilla (G-Mix)" by Bruno Mars featuring Pharrell and R. Kelly
I've said elsewhere that pretty much the only thing I don't like about Unorthodox Jukebox is the chorus "you and me baby makin' love like gorillas," but at the same time I realized that that was more about Bruno Mars not being able to pull off a lyric like that, whereas R. Kelly can get away with "like two gorillas in the jungle makin' love." So it's appropriate to have Kells on the remix, even if the result is kind of on-the-nose and exactly how you'd expect it to sound. And Pharrell doesn't really do much of anything, which is a shame -- surprisingly there's never really been an R. Kelly/Neptunes collaboration, outside of one song called "Baby Girl" that there's an unreleased demo of floating out there.
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+

"Heaven Or Hell (Remix)" by Gunplay featuring Meek Mill and Jadakiss
I love these kinda embattled introspective Gunplay songs like "Bible On The Dash," although I'm already less impressed with this song just because the new Yo Gotti album has a much better flip on the "I Got 5 On It" beat. Still, I couldn't ask for better guests than Meek and Jada, and they both kill it.
Best Verse: Jadakiss
Overall Grade: B+

"If We Had Your Eyes (Remix)" by Michelle Williams featuring Fantasia
I liked Michelle's voice fine in the context of Destiny's Child records, but taken by itself in a single from one of her gospel records it's a bit much. So it's actually nice just to get Fantasia in the mix, although the song itself is just really bland to begin with, so even though she sounds great on the second verse it's not revelatory or anything.
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C

"I Luv This Shit (Remix)" by August Alsina featuring Chris Brown and Trey Songz
Remixing this song was essential, both because it's the biggest 'street' R&B song of the year, and because the hit version featured a Trinidad James verse and you need to swap that shit out. But I dunno about having the two most established singers in August Alsina's lane on the remix, I guess it's nice to have their co-sign but it's not like with rappers where that really matters. And of course this has already replaced the original on most radio playlists, just like the Chris Brown remix of the Sevyn Streeter single did, kinda sucks that the few R&B songs by other people on the radio keep ending up with him on it.
Best Verse: Trey Songz
Overall Grade: B-

"My Kind Of Love (Remix)" by Emili Sande f/ Ab-Soul
I really like the original of this song, and the remix does a pretty good job of putting Sande's vocal over a rap beat that still suits it and doesn't feel like it's trying too hard. But Ab-Soul has developed a reputation for shitting up every big guest verse spot he's gotten in 2013 (sometimes literally -- "let me put my mouth where you potty boo" on the Chance The Rapper tape and all). He's not bad on this, kind of bland but he spits something that fits the emotional tenor of the song, which is kind of rare on these rap remixes of pop and R&B songs.
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"My Story (Remix)" by R. Kelly featuring Katie Got Bandz and Rockie Fresh
I've never been much of a fan of "My Story," and I was actually thinking the other day that it was kind of dumb for him to do a "yeah I'm from that Chi town dirt" song and then put someone from Atlanta like 2 Chainz on it, really could've been a good chance to connect with the new generation of Chicago rappers. So hearing that this dropped was like, oh, of course, glad he had the same idea. I kinda wish they'd gone all out and redid the beat as a straight up drill song -- it's so awkward and ill-fitting as an R. Kelly song to begin with, might as well go all the way. Never been a big fan of Katie, but she doesn't sound as incompetent as a rapper here as she has on some of her big solo songs, and Rockie Fresh never stuck out to me on those MMG records but his verse is really good.
Best Verse: Rockie Fresh
Overall Grade: B-

"Paranoid (Remix)" by Ty Dolla $ign featuring B.o.B
They already threw Jeezy on this dude's first semi-big song, and they're still struggling to get him a real hit and throwing whoever on songs. This remix had some amusing semi-controversy because the original had Ty's homie Joe Moses talking shit about T.I. and Tiny and then the official single replaced him with T.I.'s boy B.o.B. But whatever, B.o.B is embarrassing on this just like all his recent stuff, and I stand by what I said a few months ago about Ty Dolla $ign, fuck this douchebag.
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: F

"Strong (Remix)" by Young Dro featuring 2 Chainz
Another DJ Mustard track, this track was underwhelming to begin with as a follow-up single to "F.D.B." and a chance to hear Dro kill the sound of the moment. And 2 Chainz on the remix should be cool since Dro is secretly a father to some of his styles, but his verse just comes and goes forgettable as hell, whole thing feels like a missed opportunity.
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C-

"Swangin' (Remix)" by Stalley featuring Lil Keke, Trae The Truth, Bun B and ESG
Stalley doing an H-town homage for his single was cool I guess, but having Scarface on it was almost offensive like damn can anybody get a Scarface verse and they're just not bothering? Still, cool to get more Texans involved in a remix, even if it's sad that the person waving that flag in the mainstream right now is some super bland dude from Ohio. Everywhere this track has been posted has listed Chamillionaire as one of the guests, but he's nowhere to be heard on it, which I guess is just proof that nobody listens to what they're posting anymore.
Best Verse: Trae The Truth
Overall Grade: C+

"10 2 10 (Remix)" by Big Sean featuring Rick Ross and Travis $cott
Oh good, Sean is trying to save his album by pushing the ill-fitting street banger with the "working like I'm Mexican" hook. This fucking guy. As soon as Ross shows up in turns into a perfectly decent Ross song, though. I don't know who asked for Travis $cott on anything but we don't need him.
Best Verse: Rick Ross
Overall Grade: C-

"Type of Way (Remix)" by Rich Homie Quan featuring Jeezy and Meek Mill
Obviously one of the bangers of the year, and after the talk of Drake considering doing the remix, I'm pretty happy with the final lineup that he's nowhere near. Quan actually shows out and proves it's still his song, though.
Best Verse: Meek Mill
Overall Grade: A-

I recently wrote my first piece for the Washington City Paper, interviewing Shy Glizzy for their People Issue.

I posted Ellis's new video "Misled" featuring Styles P. on the Baltimore City Paper site.

This week's Short List.

1. Keith Urban featuring Miranda Lambert - "We Were Us"
Urban and Lambert are both firmly in the middle tier of country stars who I don't feel too strongly about either way; they have undeniable talent and some songs I enjoy but for the most part I'm pretty indifferent. I really love the way their voices intertwine on the chorus of this song, though, and the way it transitions from her on the first verse to him on the second verse. It's just so breezy and shimmering and bright, and then in 3 minutes it's over. Here's the obligatory link to my running favorite 2013 singles Spotify playlist, by the way.

2. Busta Rhymes f/ Q-Tip - "Thank You"
Apparently Q-Tip was talking up this song in interviews over a year ago and saying people should petition to make it Busta's lead single, and now it's finally out, after that "#TwerkIt" garbage dropped and flopped. The rapping on this song is just incredible, intricate and relentless while actually fun to listen to and not bogged down in labored technique (cough Eminem cough). It's just so inspiring to hear these two guys reaffirm their talent and make a great song together more than 20 years after "Scenario," they're really two of my all-time favorites. And it's hilarious that Lil Wayne and Kanye have tacked-on spoken cameos, which was probably the only way Cash Money would release it, because it's painfully obvious those guys are completely incapable of rapping like Busta and Tip do on this song.

3. Kelly Rowland f/ Wiz Khalifa - "Gone"
I've already spent the whole year hyping up Harmony "H-Money" Samuels as my new favorite producer in R&B, mostly for his work on the Fantasia and Ariana Grande albums, but this one was a standout on Kelly's album that I'm glad is now a single. Putting the "Big Yellow Taxi" chorus in an R&B context after "Got Til It's Gone" is borderline unnecessary, but it sounds great in Kelly's voice and the appeal lies mainly in the beat anyway. Wiz Khalifa even drops a little reference to the "Joni Mitchell never lies" bit, but that just kinda underlines what a huge downgrade Q-Tip to Wiz is.

4. Zendaya - "Replay"
Zendaya is apparently a girl on a Disney show and her music is this semi-R&B semi-pop kinda thing, which I guess makes her a little like the next Ariana Grande, although their music isn't really similar. I've been hearing this song a lot on 95.5 in Washington, the same station that played the hell out of Little Mix's "Wings" earlier this year, because they seem to pick up on these random pop records that aren't big anywhere else, but usually good ones. And then I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was produced  by Mick Schultz, who did all the amazing production work on both of Jeremih's albums.

5. Rico Love - "They Don't Know"
I enjoyed the Rico Love EP that Bad Boy dropped in August, but it seemed like such a random release out of nowhere that it didn't even occur to me that one of the songs might pop off as a radio single, which one of the best tracks is now starting to do. It's even one of the tracks where he raps like Ma$e!

6. Robin Thicke f/ Kendrick Lamar - "Give It 2 You"
Back in the spring, when it was clear "Blurred Lines" was going to be a big record for Robin Thicke but there was really no sense of just how big it'd end up, he previewed a new song in a radio interview, produced by will.i.am and Dr. Luke and featuring 2 Chainz and Kendrick, which seemed like a harbinger of some really ill-conceived club pop aspirations. Ultimately, though, the Blurred Lines album turned out to be a pretty shrewd fusion of Thicke's usual sound with something a little more uptempo and pop, and the Timbaland track is probably the only one I'd happily throw out entirely. "Give It 2 U" is still kind of garish and over-the-top, but it works in a weird way, with Thicke's busy falsetto darting around this big squelchy beat. It also helps that the single version deletes the 2 Chainz verse, which, hysterically bizarre "black Michael Jackson" boast aside, is pretty terrible, and retains the Kendrick verse, which is embarrassing in its own way but fits the song well and is probably a better dumbed down Kendrick club song guest spot than the one on "Fuckin' Problems." And that in itself is kinda funny since 2 Chainz is the one Thicke sought out himself to appear on the song, and Kendrick was the one that the label threw on there. The current R&B radio single, "4 The Rest Of My Life," is pretty good too.

7. Daft Punk f/ Pharrell Williams - "Lose Yourself To Dance"
Neither Daft Punk nor Robin Thicke were ever going to have a follow-up single that would be half as big as their giant Pharrell-assisted summer jams, but Daft Punk at least had another Pharrell track ready to go. And while it's not as good as "Get Lucky," it has its own charm, and actually reminds me more viscerally of various Chic songs than the other Nile Rodgers collaborations on the album -- a lot of Chic songs actually had kinda slow grooves, after all. I am curious if they'll release any non-Pharrell singles off this album, though, I love "Fragments of Time" but I suppose there's not really any radio format for that.

8. India.Arie - "Just Do You"
She's still embarrassing as hell with that period in the middle of her name and her latest album is called fucking SongVersation for chrissakes, but she does occasionally make some nice songs, and this is a good little motivational anthem. I also have this weird thing where any song that vaguely reminds me of "Advice For The Young At Heart" by Tears For Fears is instantly OK with me.

9. Pink f/ Lily Allen - "True Love"
Happy that Pink got back to releasing Greg Kurstin productions as singles after that one with the fun. guy. Lily Allen being on this song was a liability for me at first, until I realized that she's just on the bridge and that comes and goes pretty quickly. But this week was a good reminder of how terrible she is with that "Hard Out Here" song, which as it happens is kind of like a dramatically failed version of what Pink did years ago on "Stupid Girls."

10. DJ Clue f/ Future, Nicki Minaj, French Montana and Juelz Santana - "Rich Friday"
Future and Nicki has been the combination of choice for overstuffed posse cut singles this year from Rich Gang's "Tapout" to DJ Khaled's "I Wanna Be With You," but surprisingly the DJ Clue one is better than either of those. And unlike those tracks, or most of Future's features this year in general, he actually gets a verse on here, which is cool because you can hate on him as a rapper but it's not like you can say French is any better.