1. Ne-Yo - "Closer"
After a drab 2007 full of the diminishing returns of a lengthy series of "Irreplaceable" and "So Sick" knockoffs, my interest in Ne-Yo and Stargate was at such a low when this first dropped in March that I don't think I even gave it a chance, until finally about 3 months of airplay (and a surrounding swirl of other indications of Stargate's improvement) won me over, and I realized how ridiculously perfect this song is on every level.

2. John Legend f/ Andre 3000 - "Green Light"
As far as great uptempo dancy R&B hits go, this is the lighter flipside of the more brooding "Closer," but almost its equal, and both are fast and invigorating, whereas the four-on-the-floor R&B of '06 and '07 was largely sluggish and unexciting.

3. Jordin Sparks f/ Chris Brown - "No Air"
No chart phenomenon is more my pop music nemesis than Chris Brown, but now and again his piercingly unpleasant voice and charmless phrasing happen upon a song so great even he can't kill it.

4. Sara Bareilles - "Love Song"
I've said it before and I'll say it again: my favorite girly piano pop smash since "One Thousand Miles."

5. Jazmine Sullivan f/ Missy Elliott - "I Need U Bad"
Missy can't seem to figure out what to do with herself these last few years, but now and then she pulls off an assist on a transcendent R&B jam sans Timbaland (see also: Keyshia's "Let It Go" and Tweet's "Turn The Lights Off").

6. Young Jeezy f/ Kanye West - "Put On"
Whether by design or by accident, this song is great simply because it feels like a remix when it's the original version, or two artists' completely different versions of a song bridged together, and somehow far greater than the sum of its parts for it.

7. Pink - "So What"
The goofy bravado of the verses, colliding with the tears-streaking-down synths on the chorus, make this one of the most confusing and cathartic moments in pop music in recent memory.

8. Hot Stylz f/ Yung Joc - "Lookin' Boy"
Turns out that the plinking synth plod of snap songs like "Laffy Taffy" isn't a problem if a bunch of goofballs spit ridiculous insults at a mile a minute over it.



9. T-Pain f/ Ludacris - "Chopped 'N Skrewed"
Mainstream artists have been toying with DJ Screw's innovation to playful effect for half a decade now (in fact, Luda already did so in 2003 on Chicken-N-Beer's "Screwed Up"), but despite the staleness of the idea the execution is so inspired it doesn't matter.

10. T.I. f/ Swizz Beatz - "Swing Ya Rag"
Paper Trail's staggering 6 advance singles were all perfectly calculated along a spectrum (in stark contrast to the throwing-everything-at-the-wall failure of Curtis's seemingly similar campaign), and at least 4 of them were in tune with my particular demographic enough to make this list, with the Swizz track predictably landing the highest.

11. Soulja Boy Tell 'Em - "Donk"
Fuck the funny but ultimately unpleasant "Yahhh," this is the sleeper hit that put his brief moment of fame into overtime. I've heard enough DJs blend this with other songs to know that the tempo isn't actually unique, but there's something about the groove of this drum pattern and the beat that it pivots on that is so completely unexpected and disorienting.

12. Jennifer Hudson - "Spotlight"
It's really a shame, for many reasons, that J-Hud's 2008 will be largely remember for something other than this great song.

13. Snoop Dogg f/ Too $hort and Mistah F.A.B. - "Life Of Da Party"
3 generations of West coast wisecrackers (although for some reason Mistah F.A.B. is my age and looks older than Snoop and $hort dog combined) on one of the most slept on beats of the year.

14. Coldplay - "Lost!"
I keep reminding myself that I can listen to this without a terrible Jay-Z verse on it.

15. Ryan Leslie - "Diamond Girl"
Why this weak-chinned studio rat couldn't make the leap to frontman as effortlessly as The-Dream is a mystery to me, because he sure as hell had the songs to make it happen.

16. Paramore - "That's What You Get"
Shuffled between Riot's big breakthrough hits and the Twilight soundtrack smash, its chart impact was negligible, but this remains probably the best Paramore song ever.

17. Lupe Fiasco f/ Nikki Jean - "Hip Hop Saved My Life"
Sorting through dozens and dozens of underground mixtapes by local unknowns every year, I surprisingly get more tired of painfully sincere odes to hip hop than any other kind of overdone rap song formula, so the fact that Lupe, who I've never been a huge fan of, managed to totally win me over with just such a song is a testament to just how moving and funny and pitch perfect this track is.



18. Katy Perry - "Hot N Cold"
Dr. Luke's bag of hits is full of twins, and it took me a while to shake off the similarities of this one to its breezier blueprint (Paris Hilton's "Nothing In This World"), but like most of his confections, it eventually dominated my brain.

19. Cherish f/ Yung Joc - "Killa"
For someone whose solo career is ice cold and scored his only major hit a loooong 3 years ago, Yung Joc sure did guest on a lot of dope songs this year.

20. Lil Mama f/ T-Pain - "What It Is (Strike A Pose)"
Two consecutive singles with T-Pain reeks of the desperation that's surrounded this project from the moment they weren't abel to drop it directly on the heels of "Lip Gloss," but this big swinging nasty Danjahands beat makes me forget all about how unremarkable the rapper is or how annoying the hook is.

21. Slim f/ Ryan Leslie and Fabolous - "Good Lovin'"
This is probably the closest thing to vintage g-funk that we got on the radio this year.

22. B.O.B. - "Haterz Everywhere"
Back at the end of last year when it really started to bubble, it felt like some real potentially major, song of the year shit, but since then it's kind of faded into the ongoing parade of songs about haters.

23. Ne-Yo - "Miss Independent"
As soon as I heard the glittering organs of "Flashing Lights," I knew it was a matter of time before some other smart producers starting biting the sound, but I never thought Stargate of all people would appropriate it so beautifully. I may have sung along with this song more often than any other on this list.

24. T.I. f/ Rihanna - "Live Your Life"
I never thought I'd see Just Blaze's first #1 hit in 2008.

25. Shawty Lo - "Foolish"
Yes, the best Shawty Lo has or ever will sound still comes in behind a pretty middling T.I. single.

26. Coldplay - "Viva la Vida"
Sure, that little slice used in the iTunes ad is the essence of why this song is a blockbuster, but all the twinkly layers and bridges that sustain its whole running time are some serious Eno gold.

27. Nas f/ Keri Hilson - "Hero"
After 5 years of letting rap radio forget he exists, this should've been his biggest single since "I Can," but considering all that's passed since then, I can't blame them for continuing to ignore him.



28. Ludo - "Love Me Dead"
If this witty, goofy curio came out in the late '90s, it would have been dime a dozen, but in the current radio environment it's an arresting change of pace.

29. The Jonas Brothers - "Lovebug"
As boy band teen idols at the top of their game, they've yet to really delivery a song that transcends and wins over those of us who aren't screaming tweens, but this song as performed at the VMAs inched toward it.

30. Ray J - "Gifts"
One of the most odious and unctuous figures in pop culture today, but damn if he doesn't keep delivering the jams.

31. Alicia Keys - "Teenage Love Affair"
A year ago, I was hoping that either this or "Wreckless Love" would be her next single, and as much as I enjoyed hearing this on the radio, I now kinda wish she went the other way, but maybe I'm just getting greedy.

32. Slim f/ Yung Joc - "So Fly"
There's something strangely and bewitchingly tranquil about the way Slim and his little voice eke out party-starting phrases like "ay what it do" and "let the haters hear the noise."

33. Ryan Leslie f/ Cassie and Fabolous - "Addiction"
"Diamond Girl" and "Me & You" gave me an inkling, but this song was probably the moment I knew Ryan Leslie was radio R&B's next great producer.

34. Plies f/ Ne-Yo - "Bust It Baby Part 2"
Collaborations between rappers and R&B singers often trade on contrasting the roughness of the former with the smoothness of the latter, but rarely has there been a pair as mismatched as these two, and the combination is all the more entertaining for it. I propose a duets album, to be titled Year Of The Goontleman.

35. Charlie Wilson f/ T-Pain - "Supa Sexxy"
In a year when T-Pain gradually lowered expectations to the point that "Can't Believe It" sounded like a standout, all his genuinely good collabs languished in the lower reaches of the charts, if they charted at all.

36. Webbie f/ Lil Phat of 3 Deep and Lil Boosie - "Independent"
Boosie's "bye guhl!" = ad lib of the year.

37. Theory Of A Deadman - "Bad Girlfriend"
And with this, Nickelback's longtime understudies overtake their teachers.

39. Robin Thicke - "Magic"
I liked this more before I heard the album and all the even better tracks on it, but this is still pretty dope.

40. Smashing Pumpkins - "G.L.O.W."
The entire enterprise of the Smashing Pumpkins existing again the past couple years has been one long ridiculous comedy of errors, but here and there they do get something right.



41. Ashanti - "Good Good"
Usher and Mariah racked up blockbusters in '04 and '05, respectively, by running with smooth Jermaine Dupri 808s-and-pianos bangers like this one, and it was absolutely at their peril that they abandoned that winning formula in '08. It's just a shame Ashanti's career was too far gone to go the distance with this one.

42. "Weird Al" Yankovic - "Whatever You Like"
As a strike-while-the-iron-is-hot digital distro experiment, this didn't seem to be a ringing success, but I liked it better than the original and the whole "you want top ramen, need top ramen" bit makes me chuckle every time, so I hope Al doesn't get discouraged from dropping more standalone singles to iTunes.

43. Usher - "Trading Places"
Musically this is a masterpiece, taking spare drums and piano and gradually building to a climactic guitar solo that fizzles back down. It's a shame Usher chose a lyrical trope that makes it sound like his woman's violating him with a strap-on, though.

44. Jack White and Alicia Keys - "Another Way To Die"
On paper, it was a pretty WTF duet, and by simply shouting in unison over a typical White composition instead of collaborating on a song and writing harmony parts, it was pretty WTF in practice as well, but there was something really enjoyable about this big lumbering beast of a cross-promotional soundtrack song.

45. Nickelback - "Gotta Be Somebody"
It's a step down from "Photograph," but it's still cool to hear some Mutt Lange sheen on their world-class power ballad pap.

46. New Kids On The Block f/ Ne-Yo - "Single"
Though there's a Ne-Yo solo version on Year Of The Gentleman, it's really the NKOTB version, with Donnie's raps and the group singing that "let me sing it in a harmony" part in unison, that bring this glimmering ball of cheese to life.

47. 50 Cent - "Get Up"
It's a shame that just when everyone stopped paying attention to them entirely, 50 and Scott Storch whipped up something so much livelier than the hits they ruled the world with in 2005.

48. Trina f/ Killer Mike - "Look Back At Me"
Horrible Spank Rock-type hipster groups have damn near ruined my love for filthy sex raps, but now and then one of the masters of the subgenre reminds me what I enjoy about it so much.

49. Maroon 5 f/ Rihanna - "If I Never See Your Face Again (Remix)"
With or without Rihanna, they really should've released this right after "Makes Me Wonder" instead of squandering momentum with all those other weak singles.

50. Chris Brown f/ Keri Hilson - "Superhuman"
It's no "No Air," but at this point I'm happy to hear a reasonable facsimile.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22, 2008 at 11:31 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.