1. Eli Young Band - "Even If It Breaks Your Heart"
Country radio is good at pushing my AOR '80s rock buttons, and this song is so Tom Petty it kills me. The first day that it got really good and stuck in my head was the night I watched the "Nashville" pilot, which opens with this song playing over the first scene.

2. Keyshia Cole f/ Lil Wayne - "Enough of No Love"
Keyshia has really excelled so much at carving out a niche and just working the hell out of that niche that it's easy to take her for granted, but when her shit hits, it hits hard, the hook on this is huge. It's a shame that Wayne just gets thrown on 20% of all R&B singles still just as a matter of tradition, but he gets in the way here less than usual.

3. PSY - "Gangnam Style"
It's crazy how quickly this song took America by storm, I don't think I'd even heard it when I last did one of these posts in September. And over the last few weeks I've kinda gone up and down about whether I like it or not or don't even really have any opinion about it. But when it comes on the radio, I'm surprised at how happy I am to hear it. Although obviously a lot of the charm is in the video, which is probably the first time any music video has upped the ante in visual spectacle since "Bad Romance."

4. 2 Chainz f/ Kanye West - "Birthday Song"
Although I'm generally pro-2 Chainz, and really like his album, I generally feel like he hasn't really been firing on all cylinders on most of his guest verses (besides "Mercy") and that "No Lie" was a terrible single. So this, while not a total triumph, at least feels like a step in the right direction, and is also kind of a callback to old pre-nutjob Kanye with some goofy relatable details -- I always crack up at "Last birthday she got you a new sweater/ put it on give her a kiss and tell her 'do better.'"

5. Three Days Grace - "Chalk Outline"
Their last single a year or two back, "Lost In You," was the first time I ever really enjoyed a Three Days Grace song, I think partly because I was surprised they could pull of a nice generic midtempo track like that. Likewise, the big bombastic fuzz bass on "Chalk Outline" and its skittering drumbeat would be kind of expected and lame from Korn, but to hear this usually totally bland grunge band try on some new textures is vaguely exciting.

6. Seether - "Here And Now"
I have been fond of pointing out that two of Seether's earlier singles nicked hooks from Alanis Morrissette and Republica hits, so it saddens me to report that "Here And Now" does not rip off Letters To Cleo. It is pretty good, though, one of their most bearable singles to date. And now that bands like them and Nickelback and Shinedown are kind of on the decline even on rock radio, and neo-grunge seems to be finally waning as a commercial force, it feels a little easier to give these guys a tiny bit of credit when they're decent.

7. Robin Thicke - "All Tied Up"
Thicke's last album was pretty dope and I really didn't spend enough time with it, so I'm glad this song has become yet another sleeper hit for him. This song is a really good example of how his voice is increasingly taking on Michael McDonald qualities when he sings in a gruff lower register, and even a little in his falsetto.

8. Train - "50 Ways To Say Goodbye"
When "Drive By" didn't do anything for me, I breathed a sigh of relief that I wouldn't feel the need to be that fuckin' guy defending a Train song as I had been with "Hey, Soul Sister" (and "Drops Of Jupiter" and "Meet Virginia" before it). But oh shit, I kinda like this. Weirdly it was produced by Butch Walker and the non-Stargate guys who did all the guitar strumming bits on Stargate hits like "Irreplaceable" and "With You." And the video ends with a kid holding up a poster that says "rack city bitch."

9. Trey Songz - "Dive In"
Back over the summer during the Olympics, I was listening to the D.C. radio show Elliot In The Morning and they were doing some bit drooling over women on the U.S. swim team and started playing this song, which was the first time I heard it, and now I crack up every time I hear Trey song "SPLASH!" even more than I would otherwise. I feel bad that Usher just released a much more serious song with a similar metaphor called "Dive" as a single, because that's a pretty good song and one of the best on his album, but not remotely as memorable as this.

10. Maroon 5 - "One More Night"
The whole current era of Maroon 5 is kind of awkward, because they never really had much rock band cred to begin with, but they still sold out to whatever extent a band like Maroon 5 can sell out, in terms of just giving up their sound to dance pop producers to stay on the charts and actually becoming bigger than ever in the process. And I still kind of think Adam Levine's writing good songs, even enjoyed "Moves Like Jagger" and "Payphone" more than I'd like to admit and this one's kind of a banger, despite his annoyingly squeaky vocal delivery. The drum pattern is kind of a knockoff of "Umbrella," except weirdo I am I like these drums more than "Umbrella."

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28, 2012 at 4:55 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.