Singles ‘11

01. JoJo - Marvin’s Room (Can’t Do Better)

JoJo introduces us to her adulthood as bluntly as possible: with cursing, drug abuse, and explicit sexual references. This isn’t the thirteen year old who cavorted at the funfair with Bow Wow.

02. Tyler, the Creator - Yonkers

There’s a gaping black void at the center of Tyler, the Creator, a determined and incessant ugliness that infuses all he turns his mind to.

03. EMA - California

“L.A. is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities.”

04. Lady Gaga - Hair

That Gaga can admit on behalf of anyone “I just want to be free/I just want to be me/And I want lots of friends who invite me to their parties” is invigorating. That she might just be admitting it on behalf of everyone is extraordinary.

05. Frank Ocean - Strawberry Swing

The last blissful moments of slumber, with the dream fittingly ended by the buzz of an alarm clock.

06. Danny Brown - Lincoln Continental

Swag rap to its extreme, with every other line someone else’s recycled ad-lib. It works straight though; just picture Lil’ B on the remix.

07. Britney Spears - Till the World Ends

The wobbly synths and Britney’s not-quite unnoticeable tracing of Ke$ha’s guidelines mark time well enough, but they’re just there to delay, in almost tantric fashion, the arrival of the blissful chorus. After the hook’s first appearance, with the song two thirds finished, the tune catapults into untethered, freeform loveliness, a state of bliss teetering forever on the cusp of the apocalypse.

08. Bon Iver - Beth/Rest

The soft synth washes remind me of “Life in a Northern Town.” That song’s celebration is here drained, revealing the past tense of festivity: regret.

09. Treal Lee & Prince Rick ft. Waka Flocka Flame, Ace Hood, Slim Dunkin & Translee - Throwed Off (Remix)

Stiff-jawed hardbody rap; as the chorus goes, “Fuck everybody!” Flocka talks about ironing boards.

10. Soulja Boy - Speakers Going Hammer

Making Rick Ross jokes before Ross even knew he was a joke.

11. The Rej3ctz - Cat Daddy

The jerking that won’t die. Is “Spongebob Squarepants” still on Nick anyway?

12. Kanye West - Mama’s Boyfriend

If anyone thinks Kanye lacks a sense of humor, hear him faking a tantrum: “I ain’t going to bed no time soon, and when I do, I’m sleeping in my Mama’s room!”

13. Frank Ocean - Novocane

The intention is to mimic the melancholic state of a decaying relationship, but, really, it succeeds for a much simpler reason: the whirring, vaguely ’90s-style beat keeping time throughout the tune. It’s enough of a hook that Ocean has room to stretch out his songwriting nous and limited but creamy vocal.

14. Sunny Sweeney - Staying’s Worse than Leaving

There’s enough meaning left unmentioned in the first two lines (“Leaving’s hard… trust me, it’s really bad”) for the rest of the tune to just coast.

15. Toro y Moi - Still Sound

Dreamy funk, possessed with the refinement of trip-hop but none of the class dislocation.

16. Kanye West - All of the Lights

Detentes constructed at borders, working class doom, depression rap at stadium scale.

17. Lady Gaga - The Edge of Glory

It plays like a musical number, an encore. It charges once more into the pop breach after an hour of hair and bad kids and Judas-betrayed black Jesuses for one last turn in the spotlight.

18. Blake Shelton - Honey Bee

Shelton writes a spiritual sequel to Martina McBride’s “I Love You,” vibrant and optimistic in its country-pop joy. “Yeah, that came out a little country,” he says. Precisely.

19. Kanye West ft. Jay-Z, Rick Ross & Nicki Minaj - Monster

The song of a thousand Nicki Minaj voices, plus Jay-Z not getting enough LOOOOVE and Yeezy doing Napoleon Dynamite.

The-Dream’s trick here is in making sex sound like a suicide.

21. Yelawolf - Daddy’s Lambo

Class warfare performed with eyes as big as Jolly Ranchers. “You must have white bread,” marvels Yela, who is by no means the rube he presents himself to be.

22. Brad Paisley - A Man Don’t Have to Die

Recession country done centrist style: Paisley welcomes the future, still doesn’t have a job. The title’s second half is “…to go to hell.”

23. Michelle Branch - Loud Music

Branch does her 2002 thing over palm-mute power chords like they never went away. The song’s quality is inversely proportional to that of the old tunes it namedrops.

24. Waka Flocka Flame - Grove Street Party

Dangerous like a street party should be; who are these people? Are they gonna share their drinks? We gon’ get fucked up?

25. Rihanna - S&M

It’s the assurance in her voice when she growls, “I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it.” Rihanna sings the M in the voice of the S.

26. Lil’ Wayne - Dear Anne (Stan Pt. II)

Weezy over-shares. The best parts are the t.a.T.U. sample, courtesy of an oddly restrained Swizz Beatz, and the way the stage directions seep into the soliloquy: “I hope, hold up, baby — l-let me switch hands.”

27. Rick Ross ft. Lil’ Wayne - 9 Piece (Remix)

He’s selling dope off the iPhone. Not sure what else I can tell you.

28. Rittz - White Jesus

Rittz is a Yela who no longer dreams of alien catfish. Even when he’s cocky, the extinguished ambition is suffocating, and this isn’t the worst of it.

29. Sophie Ellis Bextor - Starlight

“Starlight” is not a comeback, but that’s no fault of the tune, a coolly luminescent number that insinuates itself into one’s good graces with its dreamy liquid quality alone. It has the same loose focus as falling asleep in the taxi cab on the way home from the club.

30. Simple Plan ft. Natasha Bedingfeld - Jet Lag

The spark behind the song’s enormous appeal is its bottle rocket guitar line, its stuttering “heart-heart” chorus, and, of course, the vocal interplay between Pierre Bouvier and a Natasha Bedingfield surprisingly suited to power chords.

31. Ke$ha - Blow

“Blow” succeeds thanks to its adolescent recognition of ennui as something to be celebrated: “Dirt and glitter cover the floor/We’re pretty and sick, we’re young and we’re bored.” Teenage angst has paid off well.

32. Taylor Swift - The Story of Us

She is a visual writer, and “See me nervously pulling at my clothes and trying to look busy” exemplifies her ability to escape her own head and capture the emotional tenor of a scene as if she were filming it rather than experiencing it.

33. Yasmin - On My Own

Hard to enjoy if you focus on the lyrics — she sounds like a child of upper middle class parents who believes she came from nothing because she had to go to public school — difficult not to if you concentrate on the rolling toms.

34. Wiz Khalifa - Roll Up

…this is a funny Mitt Romney joke.

35. Childish Gambino - Freaks and Geeks

Three-and-a-half-minutes of straight spitting, no hook, and culminating in the titular hashtag (“My clique should be cancelled…”) perfectly pitched to fans of Donald Glover’s day job acting in the pop-culture savvy NBC sitcom “Community.”

36. Fat Joe ft. Vado - Massacre on Madison

New York street-pomp. Somehow Joey Crack is still spitting hot singles a decade after he’d proved he’d never make a great album.

37. Allo Darlin’ - My Heart is a Drummer

Bravely twee, in the way all twee should be. The recognition is that emotions are complicated, not that the protagonist is uniquely incapable of dealing with emotion.

38. Ducktails - Art Vandelay

Flyscreen indie rock recorded as a diary entry illustrated with Instagram photography, and thus a memory formed in archival state.

39. Yelawolf ft. Trae - Shit I Seen

Alabama-native Yelawolf, whose Caucasian looks are more skate rat than good ol’ boy, has a musical approach less Hazzard County and more Yoknapatawpha.

40. Cut Copy - Need You Now

The ache here is the kind of gauzy emotional feint that would be derived from a Jim Kerr chorus if it were not allowed to crest, but was forced just to float.

41. The Joy Formidable - Whirring

Joy Formidable singer Ritzy Bryan does much of the heavy lifting on “Whirring”; her vocal lifts the sparkling riffs to even higher altitudes.

42. Wild Flag - Future Crimes

It never quite bursts into bloom the way a properly anthemic single should and it has that same feeling of mistaken briefness as Elvis Costello’s “Welcome to the Working Week,” but that element of reservation just encourages me to play it again.

43. Katy Perry - Last Friday Night (TGIF)

Perry is our pink glitter golem into which we can pour our dumbest selves, an Übermensch of ill-advised behaviors, a dazed, grinning reminder that even when we are at our most unforgivably indulgent, we will regain sense and sobriety.

44. Beyoncé - 1 + 1

B dons Prince paisley for summer pop’s costume party, and she wears it well.

Top 91 things in music in 2011 (1-5)

I might do some other lists this year, but this will be my main one. Not albums, not songs, not shows, just things. Listed in alphabetical order. Some reflections will be recycled, some will be new, some will be short, some will be sprawling and discursive. Like every year, I haven’t heard everything; like all years, discovering what I missed will be part of the fun.

2011: Tom Ewing said recently that Azealia Banks’s “212” — which is not on this list — stood out because it was fast in a year that was slow. Probably true! So then why was this our year of listening languorously? I’ll save you the think piece where I try to claim the answer is about OCCUPYING something.

1. The-Dream - 1977

   Katherine St. Asaph on “Form of Flattery”:

   The most natural way for me to approach a single is to bring myself to it. This is solipsistic as hell and perhaps not the best critical approach; it’s also hard not to do, and it’s what artists bait you to do. This can take two forms. You can sing with somebody or be sung at. (This works for instrumental music too; the metaphor just gets wonky, is all.) With the former, I’m the subject; with the latter, I’m the object. Neither is an aesthetic judgment — either can be done well or poorly. But they have a lot to do with whether I like something.

   I found this curious, because I don’t think I relate to music in this way. I can’t think of a song where I would say I feel I’m being sung at. Whatever the gender of the singer, whatever their background, I feel pop music is about them inviting me into their experience. (It doesn’t mean I can’t reject that experience, but it does mean I never feel attacked by it.) I think this is why I enjoy songs with fucked up narrators. It’s a skin I can slip into and shed once the runtime has ended.

   The-Dream has always had a mean streak, even when he’s shown his charming side. 1977, however, is where he really lets loose with it. It’s a record in which he doesn’t hide his cold heart under charm and extravagance. Some of my favorite parts of “Form of Flattery” are those Katherine hates: when Terius, in clipped, harsh tones, spits, “Socialite”; or, “Stop acting like a girlfriend.” Another lyric might be the album’s thesis statement: “I’m not better than that.”

   The sentiments are likely undeserved but they’re deliciously dark and a fascinating departure from Nash’s R&B to date, which has walked the line between the avant garde and the hyper-commercial. 1977 isn’t more experimental than usual; it just substitutes solipsism for Nash’s usual charm. That doesn’t make it all mean spirited either. “Wedding Crasher” is a tipsy lament that’s as pitiable as it is selfish. “Wake Me When It’s Over,” the scene-setting opener, is deflated and numb. 1977 isn’t the portrait of a nice person. It’s a too-raw, uncomfortable account of feelings far better encountered in recorded form than real life.

2. Rick Ross ft. Lil’ Wayne, “9 Piece” (God Forgives, I Don’t, forthcoming)
   

   TSJ: Last time Weezy and Rozay hooked up it was for a bland gangsta banger that sounded like it was intended to be dramatic but was instead dreary. “9 Piece” remedies that fault by being completely fucking ignant. Given this is Rick Ross we’re talking about, as well as a post-prime Weezy, fucking ignant is the best thing this collab could be. “9 Piece” starts where last summer’s “BMF” left off and gets dumber. Lex Luger! A gunshot every bar! Calling attention to your beginner-level “dead in the living room” pun! Degrading a sharp Pusha-T quip just to say “8 Ball” over and over again! SELLING DRUGS WITH AN IPHONE!

3. MellowHype, “64” [Video]
   

   Odd Future as shtick rather than movement; a pastiche of horror movie motifs parlayed into skate-punk rebelliousness. I see Village of the Damned and The Ring remade with a veneer of Blair Witch Project, psych-ward creepiness and herpetological body horror. The nods to Marilyn Manson suggest these teenagers should be treated as possessing equivalent gravitas — little — and there’e a great callback to Tyler’s “Yonkers” video in the quick shot of a hanged man kicking his tube-socked feet in midair. Witness Hodgy Beats preaching in a priest’s collar: this cultist knows his creepiness is all for show.

4. Wale ft. Rick Ross & Jadakiss - 600 Benz (Self Made Vol. 1, 2011)
   

   SRnR: Wale is smart enough to benefit from being boxed into doing ignant raps, and even though I swear he had to pick Ross’s ass hairs from his lips once he’d done spitting (“Pass me the lighter, Rozay” — barf) he squeezes some good punchlines from his fallback sneakers-and-football based wordplay. Jada does one of them Jada verses that shows why he’s always welcome on a hard nosed street track, and overall the thing ends up as a superior version of Weezy’s “John,” which has to be kind of embarrassing for Wayne, as well as a poor portent for Tha Carter IV.

5. Kanye West, “All of the Lights” (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, 2010) 

   Kanye outlived Borders, the location where his blue collar deadbeat Dad has to meet his ex to spend time with his kids. It’s a clever line — “Public visitation: We met at Borders” — with its Checkpoint Charlie overtones, and its an imaginative tune that undermines simplistic interpretations of Kanye as preening, arrogant, and out of touch. Mr. West has always had a good ear for collaborators, but who knew he could prompt one of the best verses of the year from Fergie? The deservedly maligned Black Eyed Pea upgrades the trailer trash aesthetic of “Glamorous” for a verse that complements Yeezy’s grim struggles with a gender-flipped equivalent. The tune is sprawling and symphonic, but, unlike Jon Brion’s contributions to Late Registration, the elements are all synthetic: plasticky horns, cheap trebley dum machines, and a chorus from Rihanna, whose voice is cheap and populist enough to blare from radios all over America. 

Top 91 things in music in 2011 (6-10)

6. Ducktails - Art Vandelay (Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, 2011)

The catchiest, most overtly pop move I’ve heard from Ducktails, and would apply for Matthew Mondanile’s regular band Real Estate if they hadn’t gone on to release “It’s Real” later in the year. The languid suburban wooziness of “Art Vandelay” reminds me most of the Promise Ring’s Wood/Water, the stab at “maturity” that alienated the a huge chunk of the band’s fanbase. Wood/Water wasn’t mature, though — it was just deflated — and the same applies to “Art Vandelay.” This is the sound of teenagers goofing off alone rather than together: a kind of forceful pointlessness.

7. Big Freedia at GoodGod, Sydney (December 8, 2011)

I never thought I’d see a bounce show until the day I finally got to visit New Orleans, so I felt fortunate beyond belief to have one show up right in the middle of my hometown on the other side of the world. As you can see from the first half of this video, support act Juiceboxxx, from Milwaukee, was awful — he would have been blown away by someone with even a fraction of the presence of Freedia. GoodGod is a back room behind a bar, and in this tiny space, Freedia loomed as large as she does in her video for “Get Back.” For 45 frenetic minutes she took command of the entire club, barking instructions at the crowd, her dancers, the DJ, and anyone else in the vicinity. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced such pleasure from the simple act of wilin out, but bounce is built for dancing, and I don’t know how anyone could go to this show and not have had a blast. The greatest moment? When Freedia explained the New Orleans “call and response” tradition, and explained that in the next song, she would be rapping “I GOT THAT GIN IN MY SYSTEM.” The entire room hollered back at her, unprompted: “SOMEBODY GON BE MY VICTIM.” She looked surprised, and touched.

8. Wonder Girls, “Be My Baby” (Wonder World, 2011)

Probably the most classically appealing K-Pop single we’ve covered at the Jukebox this year; the sharpened synths merely dress up a melody that could have existed for decades. (I used it as a Christmas tune this year, and it didn’t feel out of place.) It sounds like a song built for shopping malls — the sort that, like those Motown classics, you can admire even while wandering the aisles of Target. 

9. Bon Iver, “Beth/Rest” (Bon Iver, 2011)

I don’t love “Life in a Northern Town,” but I love “Beth/Rest” and it does remind me of the Dream Academy song. They both share buoyant harmonies and chintzy synths, though Justin Vernon’s composition has a deflated and elegiac quality to it. If the 2011 adventures in reinterpreting soft rock (see also: Destroyer) have been more than pose and irony, it’s because they’ve taken musical wallpaper and filled in the emotions that played out before that decor. “Beth/Rest” uses its sonic elements as signifiers — the guitar soloing indicates guitar soloing, not virtuosity, and the music is designed to contextualise old memories rather than to explore new sounds. It’s about living in a world inherited, rather than one created.

10. Blood on the Dancefloor ft. Lady Nogrady, “Bewitched” (All the Rage, 2011)

I’m so grateful that this absurd mashup of post-emo and dubstep exists, in all its mopey, misogynistic glory. “You must be a witch cause you got me living in hell,” howls a teenage unfortunate who hasn’t yet learned girls haven’t figured this shit out either. (Lady Nogrady is kind enough to to give voice to his nightmare.) The misintentioned earnestness would be wonderful even were it accompanied by old fashioned spindly octave chords, but Blood on the Dancefloor comes from a world where emo guitars and bass drops belong to the same audience. They combine the two as if they’re sure the connection is intuitive, even though “Bewitched” proves it’s actually unholy.

Top 20 most played tracks in 2011

According to my Last.fm, and therefore not entirely accurate. List edited to one track per artist.

1. EMA - California
2. Lady Gaga - Hair
3. Britney Spears - Till the World Ends
4. Russian Red - Cigarettes
5. Bruno Mars - Just the Way You Are
6. JoJo - Marvin’s Room (Can’t Do Better)
7. Ke$ha - Blow
8. The Gaslight Anthem - She Loves You
9. Frank Ocean - Strawberry Swing
10. Against Me! - I Was a Teenage Anarchist
11. The Afghan Whigs - 66 
12. Childish Gambino - Freaks and Geeks
13. Toro y Moi - Still Sound
14. Danny Brown - Lincoln Continental
15. Tyler, the Creator - Bastard
16. Wale ft. Rick Ross & Jadakiss - 600 Benz 
17. Bon Iver - Beth/Rest
18. The Joy Formidable - Whirring
19. Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Starlight
20. Omarion - Forgot About Love

Top 20 most played artists in 2011

According to my Last.fm, and therefore not entirely accurate.

1. Tyler, the Creator
2. Lady Gaga
3. The National
4. Taylor Swift
5. Kanye West
6. The Gaslight Anthem
7. Nicki Minaj
8. Laura Marling
9. Ke$ha
10. The Horrible Crowes 
11. Curren$y
12. The Notorious B.I.G.
13. EMA
14. Lil Wayne
15. Bon Iver
16. Jay-Z
17. Britney Spears
18. ASAP Rocky
19. Fleetwood Mac
20. Young Jeezy