1. Katy Perry f/ Snoop Dogg - “California Gurls”
You can’t really uphold any principles or standards with pop music, or force your expectations on it. Katy Perry has a horrendous voice and singing style, a completely corny image and sense of humor, and such an utter lack of personality that she’s actually even harder to like when she’s just talking, but none of that matters because she’s super hot and has a team of experts crafting surefire hits for her, some of which are actually good songs. “Hot N Cold” already broke down my resistence to accepting the fact that sometimes Katy Perry gets a winner, and this one has just tramped all over it. Totally generic, calculated summer jam, but a summer jam nonetheless.

2. Sick Puppies - “Odd One”
I occasionally channel surf to Fuse, the music video channel where I’m more likely to see random major label alt-rock bands I wouldn’t know exist otherwise, and for months that was the only place I’d see this video. But then more recently I started to hear it on the radio and the song really grew on me, has a nice serene vibe that I wasn’t really expecting from a band called Sick Puppies.

3. Erykah Badu - “Window Seat”
I was pretty so-so on this song when it first came out, and for a while that might have been partly because of my aversion to the corny publicity stunt video. But after a few months of hearing it both in the context of the album and occasionally on the radio, I’ve really come to love it.

4. Trae f/ Lil Wayne and Rick Ross - “Inkredible”
It’s kind of frustrating how there are dope rappers like Trae that are in a weird semi-underground midde tier of rap where they’re easily big enough to do songs with Wayne and Ross, but will only really get played on MTV Jams much if they do a video for a song with those guys. Still, this is pretty dope and it’s good to see on MTV Jams now and a then, especially because it doesn’t sound like a single in any sense other than that it has big name guests (who are both better than average here), just a crazy spiralling string-driven and the producer (Mr. Inkredible, who is confusingly not the same thing as The Inkredibles, who’ve worked with a lot of the same artists) dropping his name between verses.

5. Say Anything - “Do Better”
Say Anything is my favorite rock band of the last few years that has had a reasonable shot at major success, that I’ve actually rooted for getting a platinum plaque someday, that just hasn’t been able to make it work. And that hasn’t felt like so much of a disappointment only because they’ve continued to make great songs, and have mostly released weak and unrepresentative singles that I wouldn’t want to be hits anyway. I’m not sure why they seem to have given up on breaking through on rock radio and keep releasing drum machine and synth-heavy songs like “Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too” and “Baby Girl, I’m A Blur” as singles -- emo electro is riding high on the pop charts, but Say Anything isn’t fratty enough to get a 3OH!3 or Cobra Starship-style obnoxious party hit, or soft enough to get a gooey synth ballad hit like Hellogoodbye or Owl City (well, maybe if they’d released “Crush’d” as a single). Now they’ve finally released a pretty great song as a single, but it’s still in an awkward aesthetic middle ground where no radio format will play it, but I’m happy they’re pushing a good one for once.

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