1. Future - "Same Damn Time"
I would've had this song here a while ago but I didn't want to do it around the same time I had Future at #1 on the monthly albums list, so I let it breathe a little. Anyway, banger of the year, obviously. 

2. The Gaslight Anthem - "45" 
I had a lot of respect for The Gaslight Anthem for staying on their little indie label for another album after they'd already started getting a lot of national attention and some radio play. But I have to say, I'm kind of excited that they're finally making the jump to a major label with a Brendan O'Brien-produced album. This is already their highest charting single to date, while not really big yet, but it sounds so great on the radio, I hope it's huge, they really deserve to be a big mainstream band. Elvis Costello's "45" is better, though. 

3. Carly Rae Jepsen - "Call Me Maybe" 
Every year there's a couple really huge consensus pop songs that everybody seems to love, and I usually have a 50/50 chance of either falling in line with everyone else or being at least somewhat contrarian in resisting its charms. The fact that I've waited this song to put "Call Me Maybe" in this space, and not at #1, automatically means I think a lot less of it than most people seem to. It's nice, really, I'm just not blown away by it or anything.

4. Walk The Moon - "Anna Sun"
Last year I wrote a column about how so many of the new acts on alt-rock radio are "____ the ____" bands (Foster The People, Young The Giant, Cage The Elephant), so it amused me when I started hearing this song on the radio a few months ago and learned the band's name, after initially thinking it was maybe a new Young The Giant song. It's pretty dumb, but irresistibly catchy, in that way that all these post-Killers bands are. And it is weird how The Killers seem like the most influential band on alternative radio now.

5. Neon Trees - "Everybody Talks"
Neon Trees seemed to kick off the post-Killers wave a couple years ago with "Animal," and this isn't as good as that, but it is good in pretty much the same way -- even the little bridge that teases the verse before kicking back into the chorus repeats "Animal"'s best trick. 

6. Neon Hitch - "Fuck U Betta"
After that terrible Gym Class Heroes song she was on I didn't expect to see this lady do anything worthwhile, and certainly not a sleazy dance pop song called "Fuck U Betta" with an extremely watchable video. I didn't even know she was British. It occurs to me that Neon Hitch may be the first pop singer who actual sounds like she was influenced by Britney's vocal style, which should be a bad thing but doesn't bug me too much here.

7. Cher Lloyd - "Want U Back"
Another obnoxious British white lady doing dance pop (even with a heavily accented little spoken bit at the end like the Neon Hitch song), which I like way more than I would've expected to. I mean, she's essentially the U.K.'s Karmin as far as I can tell, but this song is a jam.

8. Pitbull - "Back In Time" 
I love that Pit has assumed Will Smith's action move soundtrack rap throne on a Will Smith movie, and that the song title evokes Huey Lewis's Back To The Future soundtrack work, while the Mickey & Silvia sample evokes Dirty Dancing. It's Pitbull's shameless soup of pop culture garbage in a nutshell.

9. Nas - "Daughters"
This is really dope, thought about including it in my Father's Day playlist. But Pitbull is still better than Nas, I guess.

10. Rick Ross f/ Usher - "Touch'N You"
Of the two Ursher/Ross joints that dropped around the same time, the boring "Lemme See" is doing better but I much prefer this, great production. And it pains me to say that since I've been so found of pointing out that people keep anticipating God Forgives, I Don't after a year plus of lousy advance singles.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 9:25 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.