Though the end of days is popularly rumored to occur in 2012, a surprising number of major hits were concerned with going out of this world with a bang. Pitbull’s “Give Me Everything” and Britney Spears’ “’Til the World Ends” urged us to keep dancing, even though an imminent apocalypse. LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” suggests that when there are no post-apocalyptic humans left for zombies to eat, they might as well start to dance. 2011 will forever be remembered as the year that Party Rock was in the house. Every night, all night. In fact, future historians might look back at the 2011 Billboard and reasonably believe that America was in a constant state of partying. Pop music’s embrace of techno and eurodance was teased in 2010, but came into full force in 2011 and it was impossible to avoid the thumping, four on the floor bass and drums and dubstep squelches on pop radio. The pop charts have been completely taken over by the club kids, who like to think they live each night like it’s their last. The two most notable harbingers of pop music trends, Britney and Rihanna, scored huge hits with techno songs, and “Hold It Against Me” even has a dubstep drop. Lady Gaga’s biggest hit, “Born This Way” shares the same relentless 4/4 as tracks by enormously popular French DJ David Guetta. If 2011 is any indication, pop music is going to continue favoring beat over melody, and artificial sounds over organic sounds until the creation of the first robot pop star in 2021.
Or at least that’s what I would think if it weren’t for the one woman beating relentlessly against the tide: Adele. Adele spent more time atop the Billboard Hot 100 than any other artist. Her album, 21, sold 17 million copies worldwide, which is roughly equivalent to selling a billion copies of a record in 1999 (probably an exaggeration, but it’s impossible to overstate how hard it is to sell as many copies as she has in this day and age). Adele’s music sounds nothing like any of the other number one hits and it’s chart popularity seems to defy conventional logic (which suggests that listeners want more electronic sounds). Adele’s success can mean three things: 1) there will always be a place for big, brassy divas with inhumanly excellent voices in pop music, 2) people requested Adele so much on the radio because they were sick of the high-volume, high energy aggression of every other song on the radio and needed a break or 3) both. Either way, good for you Adele, for adding some variety to my billboard experience this year and for making sure that your douchebag window-washer ex-boyfriend had the worst 2011 of anyone besides Moammar Gaddafi.
Now onto the list:
“Firework” – Katy Perry; (12/18/10-1/1/12, 1/15; 4 weeks)
Already reviewed this one for my 2010 edition.
“Grenade” – Bruno Mars; (1/8, 1/22, 2/5-12; 4 weeks)
Bruno Mars was a semi-pleasant chart presence in 2010, but in 2011 he took the turn towards unbearable. He’s directly responsible for two of the worst singles of the year, “The Lazy Song” and “Lighters” (the latter of which makes me want to channel Tyler, The Creator, and stab Bruno Mars in the motherfucking esophagus) “Grenade,” while not nearly as terrible as those two songs, is not a song that I would ever feel the need to hear again. Mars has a tendency to confuse grand romantic statements (“I’d take a bullet straight through my brain!”) with genuine emotion. I don’t think repeatedly screaming about the myriad ways he would die for this girl is the best way to get her to like him. As crazy as the lyrics are, Mars delivers a decent vocal performance here, and his soul-influenced performance of the song at the Grammys shows that there’s a solid track buried deep beneath Mars’s grandstanding. Unfortunately, Mars fails to find that track. Nobody is gonna remember this song in five years.
4/10
“Hold it Against Me” – Britney Spears; (1/29; 1 Week)
Interesting that this song is Britney’s only number one hit in 2011, considering it was probably the third biggest hit off her album. “Till the World Ends” and “I Wanna Go” got more radio play and are vastly superior to “Hold it Against Me,” a Dr. Luke/Max Martin track that buries Britney in an avalanche of studio gimmicks and heavy bass. The only notable thing about the whole song is the dubstep drop in the middle, and even that is relatively tame compared to Skrillex and other popular brostep guys (which makes it somewhat bearable). This is the only song that I could not recall when I started writing this, which makes sense. If someone typed “Generic 2011 Pop Song” into an automated song generator, this song would probably pop up. On a side note, can you believe Britney’s only 30? Doesn’t it seem like she should be on the wrong side of 50 by now?
4/10
“Black & Yellow” – Wiz Khalifa (2/19; 1 Week)
This is the only Hip-Hop song to reach number one on the Hot 100 in 2011. Though I’ve maligned rappers like B.o.B, Lupe Fiasco and countless others for compromising their sound for the sake of mainstream success, I don’t really think that Wiz Khalifa fits into that category. Sure, “Black & Yellow” is a glossy Stargate production with obvious chart aspirations, but Wiz keeps rapping about the same things he’s always rapped about (money, weed and bitches) in the same sing-song flow he showcased on the great Kush & OJ mixtape. “Black & Yellow,” a pop-influenced track that stays true to Wiz’s voice and persona, is the right way to crossover to the mainstream. It helps that the beat is an absolute monster, and a malleable one, with everybody, their mother and their mother’s mother recording a freestyle over the track. The hook is unstoppable, and even a seasoned Steelers hater, like me, can fuck with it.
7/10
“Born This Way” – Lady Gaga (2/26-4/2; 6 weeks)
Though it’s admirable that Lady Gaga uses her considerable clout to stand behind a substantial portion of her audience, I think Gaga took a step back with Born This Way. I like the song, but Lady Gaga seemed to take critics who anointed her as the next Madonna a bit too seriously. With The Fame Monster, and especially on “Bad Romance,” Gaga appeared to be developing her own unique artistic voice for the pop charts, but Born This Way suffered from a lack of the inventive pop songcraft of that song and by an overreliance on genre pastiche like on the hair metal “You and I,” and especially on this track. I’m probably the 1000th person to comment on the uncanny similarity between “Born This Way,” and Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” but it needs to be mentioned again. Despite the lack of originality and cleverness that marked Gaga’s best songs, “Born This Way” is still enjoyable to listen to, just disappointing in the context of her more interesting work.
6/10
“E.T.” – Katy Perry ft. Kanye West (4/9-23, 5/7-14; 5 Weeks)
Kanye West has had a great couple of years, and it pains me to say that, much as I love him, he was a major part of the worst number one in 2011. Not only does “E.T.” feature my least favorite of Perry’s vocal tics (that breathless bleating delivery), but I can’t shake the feeling that the song is vaguely racist. I mean, when Katy is singing about having sex with an alien, she’s clearly talking about a black man, right? Kanye’s phoned-in guest appearance doesn’t help. Besides the reactionary racial politics beneath the surface (seriously read the lyrics and tell me the song is not about Katy wanting to get railed by a black man), the song is not even catchy or easy to dance to, which makes me think that it rose to the top of the charts based on star power alone, not because anybody actually likes it.
1/10
“S&M” – Rihanna ft. Britney Spears; (4/30; 1 Week)
Many of the songs on Rihanna’s Loud album are about her putting her violent past with Chris Brown behind her and showing that she will not be a victim anymore. “S&M” suggests that Rihanna is sexually excited by the idea of getting hit, which along with “Love the Way You Lie,” feels like a couple steps back for her. I know that a singer’s on-record persona and real personality do not have to be one and the same, but Rihanna, music’s most public victim of domestic abuse, should probably be a bit more conscious about the messages she sends. Pontificating aside, “S&M” is a decent song, with a catchy hook and a collaboration by two of the biggest pop stars of the last decade. It seems like the song is supposed to feel like an event, but the effect is more like standard radio fare, with nothing extraordinary, but nothing extraordinarily bad either.
5/10
“Rolling in the Deep” – Adele: (5/21-7/2; 7 weeks)
“Rolling in the Deep” is the winner of the 2011 “Hey Ya” Memorial Ubiquity Award, for song that you could not go more than an hour without hearing. I had a 3-week-long stretch in July where “Rolling in the Deep” would be playing on the radio every single time I started my car. It’s a weird feeling when you change the station on the radio and the exact same song is playing on a different station. It’s even stranger when it’s playing at the same time on four different stations, which happened at least once this summer with this song. Though undoubtedly overplayed, “Rolling in the Deep” was a refreshing break from the club-driven fare that sat behind Adele for seven weeks. “Rolling in the Deep” is impeccably arranged, with the build-up on the acoustic guitar during the first verse, the gospel back-up singing during the chorus and other subtle flourishes that enhance but do not distract from Adele’s voice, which is the star of the show. Adele’s vocal is typically impassioned, highlighted by the way she pours her heart into the words “all,” “deep” and “soul.” “Rolling in the Deep” is a great song, but I’m gonna have to dock it a point or two because very few songs are as good the 1000th time as they are the first, and this isn’t one of them.
8/10 (rounded up from a 7.5)
“Give Me Everything” – Pitbull ft. Ne-Yo, Nayer & Afrojack: (7/9; 1 Week)
Boooring. The only thing I feel when I listen to this song is the unexplained urge to drink Dr. Pepper (I know this song wasn’t in that commercial but damn if subliminal advertising doesn’t work! You win this round, Pitbull).
4/10
“Party Rock Anthem” – LMFAO ft. Lauren Bennett & Goon Rock (7/16-8/20; 6 Weeks)
Let’s take a moment to contemplate the bizarreness of LMFAO’s existence. LMFAO is an uncle-nephew duo. The two members, Redfoo and SkyBlu, are the son and grandson of Motown founder and pop music legend Berry Gordy. SkyBlu once accused Mitt Romney of assault, asserting that the politician put a “Vulcan death grip” on his neck. LMFAO are the evolutionary Black Eyed Peas, specializing in mind-numbing party music and absurd music videos. The thing that makes them slightly more tolerable, is that they perform with a wink at the camera, so at least they’re not serious. LMFAO’s sense of humor (“everyday I’m shuffling” sung by an old blues guy. Clever!) can’t save “Party Rock Anthem,” which sounds like what would happen if you made an entire song out of the Peas’ “Dirty Bit,” and a catchy chorus doesn’t make up for the completely dumb and forgettable verses.
3/10
“Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” – Katy Perry: (8/20-9/3; 2 Weeks)
I could probably think of something funny to say about this song, but Rob Delaney already tore it to shreds in this article, so there isn’t much for me to add. I’ll just say that “T.G.I.F.” is more “Teenage Dream” than “E.T.,” which means I like it, and if you look past the lyrics and the unnecessarily long and painfully unfunny music video, it was a fun enough anthem for the last couple weeks of the Summer.
6/10
“Moves Like Jagger” – Maroon 5 ft. Christina Aguilera: (9/10, 9/24-10/8; 4 Weeks)
To be clear, they’re talking about sex moves, right? Because Jagger didn’t have very many dance moves, except for the occasional jumping split and prancing and jumping around like a maniac. Anyway, “Moves Like Jagger” is insidiously catchy, which makes sense because it’s basically a commercial jingle for NBC’s The Voice, albeit one that was played on every channel on the TV and Radio. I prefer Maroon 5 when they’re in their funky-music-white-boy mode than I do in their ordinary state, but I’d still rather listen to almost anything else so I can get that goddamn whistling out of my head.
4/10
“Someone Like You” – Adele; (9/17, 10/15-11/5; 5 Weeks)
“Someone Like You” is the first strictly voice and piano ballad to ever top the Billboard Hot 100. I don’t know if I’m more surprised that it took this long for that to happen or that it happened in 2011. Either way, it speaks to the universality and simplicity of the song and the strength of Adele’s vocal performance. The thing I like most about Adele is that her vocals, while amazing, are also a lot of fun to try to imitate and belt along. It would be hard to talk about this song without mentioning the SNL skit that doesn’t make fun of the song, but of people’s inevitable reaction to the song. So the next time you break up with somebody, your parakeet is sick or you barely miss out on half-price wings, put on this song and have a good sob.
8/10
“We Found Love” – Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris (11/12-12/31, 1/21/12-1/28; 10 Weeks, so far)
THIS is how you do a House crossover. People criticize Rihanna’s vocal ability, but it’s hard to argue that she can’t be compelling in the right context. Rihanna is probably the most prepared of the current pop divas to handle the imminent electronic era in pop music, as her voice complements but never overshadows the production. Considering how crappy most of Calvin Harris’s discography is, there’s a surprising level of attention to detail in “We Found Love.” There’s a subtle change in the instrumentation during each verse. I also like how they managed to avoid including a dubstep drop (must have been a struggle). It’s hard to imagine a more effective techno/pop fusion.
8/10
Recap: Three Katy Perry songs, two Rihanna and two Adele, plus chart-topping appearances by Gaga and Britney. The divas are taking over, everybody else might as well run and hide. Only one Hip-Hop song reached number one, which is almost shocking considering the genre’s mid-00s dominance. Rock is nowhere to be found. Is that a good thing? Probably. I’d rather listen to anything by Adele or Rihanna than re-live the ubiquity of the Black Eyed Peas or poor man’s Black Eyed Peas like LMFAO, and if Rock and Hip-Hop falter commercially, maybe it will force artists, producers and labels to think differently about the music they make. Or people will ignore those genres entirely and music will pound itself into an electronic oblivion until we are compelled to shuffle everyday.
