Review - The Top 20 Selling Singles of 2010 - 10 - 1

We analyse the Top 10 (out of 20) selling singles in Australia for 2010 so you don't have to.

READ OUR INTRO AND PART ONE OF THE TOP 20 SELLING SINGLES IN AUSTRALIA FOR 2010 HERE.

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10. Usher feat. Pitbull – 'DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love'

For all the club mythology in this song, 'DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love” is a song that is all about the chorus hook. There's something in the quick rhythms when Usher sings “baby tonight” so excitedly, and the way the melody pauses before gently coming back down to Earth when he sings “got us falling in love again” - it conspires to make the song infuriatingly catchy. Usher, at the club, aims to surrender his emotions to the hands of a spinner of discs, and I think this says something about the way we experience music; most music fans who lived through 2010 have some form of iPod, and can choose their own soundtracks at will – you can put headphones on and walk down the street feeling like a character in a Wes Anderson movie, or a character in a Tarantino movie depending on what is going into your ears. Yet, there's a joy in entrusting your ears to a favoured DJ, in hearing things that you're not expecting to hear, that you might not have considered listening to, but which sound awesome now you're actually listening to them. Apparently there's also parts of the song that are not the chorus hook, but they probably don't matter very much.


9. Katy Perry – 'Teenage Dream'

Katy Perry sings higher than her natural vocal range on 'Teenage Dream', and because of that she sounds less sure-of-herself, more vulnerable. There's something very adult about Perry – she comes across as more calculated, more stylised than a lot of teen pop, and there's a lot of nudge-nudge wink-wink adultness in her music – the titillation of 'I Kissed A Girl', the popsicle melting in 'California Gurls'. So when she sings about a 'Teenage Dream', she's singing from the perspective of an adult being able to live her teenage dreams (in real life, she has snagged a movie star husband after all). Perhaps the vulnerability in her vocal is meant to indicate the bittersweet-ness of discovering your teenage dreams realised – they never quite turn out how you want them to. But in a way, 'Teenage Dream' works on two complementary levels: for teens, the song is aspirational – this is what happens when your dreams come true!; for adults, it's a reminder of the innocence of young love, before your heart had really been broken, before you became more knowing and cynical.


8. Bruno Mars – 'Just The Way You Are'

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'Just The Way You Are' is so sweet that government health organisations should be checking if it causes diabetes. The song positively radiates sweetness. In the song’s video, Bruno Mars comes across completely earnestly, flashing big puppy dog eyes and a shy grin at a pretty girl. It’s a song that not only features the line “She’s so beautiful, and I tell her every day” but also the chorus hook “And you’re amazing just the way you are”. And believe me, these sweet nothings are just the tip of the iceberg. Mars also sings these lyrics with a studied sweetness - it would be very easy to sing this stuff with a smirk, or as a transparent plea for attention, but he mostly avoids anything remotely ironic, as well as avoiding vocal gymnastics and AutoTuned synthetic sounds on his voice. Mars really is doing everything within his power to sound sincere.


7. Rihanna – 'Only Girl (In The World)'

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'Only Girl (In The World)' is based around a colourless and repetitive club beat, featuring synth sounds that wouldn't sound out of place on an track by 1990s Eurotrash acts like The Real McCoy or Dr Alban. Musical tropes that evoke mid-1990s dreck are fashionable at the moment in the world of Top 40 pop – David Guetta’s beats sound similar, for example, and he’s been all over the charts. The passage of time hasn’t made those stabs of synth any less painful or ridiculous to my ears, and I don’t think they’re going for ridiculous/fun here: Rihanna’s singing is too full of passion, too serious in tone for the track to be purely silly.

Additionally, there don’t seem to be a huge amount of hooks in the song – the only one I can really discern is the melody associated with the title sung in the chorus. Taio Cruz's 'Dynamite' had five separate hooks catchier than this. The blandness of the backing track and the lack of hooks means that, to the extent that the song is memorable, the song relies on the strength of Rihanna's performance. And she can sing. The sound of the vocals is obviously processed, but it’s not overly autotuned, and it doesn’t bland out the personality. Furthermore, the vocals propel the song, give it something vaguely resembling character and purpose.


6. Owl City – 'Fireflies'

It’s not a bad song because it rips off the Postal Service; it’s a bad song because it’s a bad song. Owl City apes the sound but can’t ape the tone. 'Fireflies' doesn’t try hard enough. It’s not just that there’s too much cloy; the lyrics are unfocused, vague, and pretentious in a high school poetry kind of way. I suppose the song is about insomnia, and I get the impression that the insomnia may be related to romantic worryings. But maybe not. Because the lyrics are so poorly put together from a technical perspective, it's hard to tell. There are too many obvious rhymes - hmm, what will he rhyme “counting sheep” with? (I would have given him points for “the alarm’s beep beep”, but no, it’s “asleep”). A lot of words in the song fit awkwardly into the rhyme scheme. It all screams inelegance, and the song is one that would be helped by elegance (whereas, you know, what’s the point of elegance if you’re the Stooges?).


5. Katy Perry feat. Snoop Dogg – 'California Gurls'

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Dr Luke and Max Martin know exactly what they are doing. The song 'California Gurls' shows every sign of being expertly crafted to appeal to the target market. The music has the requisite synthy sheen and disco beat, and Katy Perry’s vocals do put some life in the song. I think the main musical reference here is Stardust’s 1999 song 'Music Sounds Better With You'; it has a very similar arrangement, chord progression, and sound (complete with stabs of disco guitar and funky bass). The vocodered “California” hook towards the end sounds like a nod to 2Pac’s 'California Love'. And, true to form for Max Martin and Dr Luke, there’s not a second of the song that’s not doing something to implant a hook in your brain. California in pop music is a fantasy land where teens can escape all the things that suck in their life (cold weather, no beaches, school, the people at school), where they can start anew with a glamorous life – if not to be a star, then to be someone desired by people around the world. And this California myth is a pied piper’s tune that has led millions to follow it. But it’s a dream, a fantasy, and the reality of California is, of course, less fun than the myth. And the people behind 'California Gurls' know this, but can’t help but celebrate it anyway.


4. Train - 'Hey, Soul Sister'

To me, 'Hey, Soul Sister' sounds like it’s modelled on 'I’m Yours' by Jason Mraz - it attempts  to reside in the same sunkissed post-Jack Johnson hippie acoustic reggae summer song world. So cue the ukelele, cue the I-V-VIm-IV chord progression (the doo-wop chord progression of our age). Even the “hey-ey” hook at the end of the chorus (which is a good 60% of the reason the song is a #1) echoes Mraz’s verse melody. It doesn’t quite have the same sense of laidback-ness as Jason Mraz - perhaps the alternarock angst Train came to prominence with on 2001's Drops Of Jupiter is hard to completely give up – but it's definitely got a lighter touch than 'Drops Of Jupiter'.

If the difference between Train circa 2001 and Train circa 2010 means anything culturally (and it does, because Train are not the kind of band that would put out a Kid A – they just want hits, and will follow current trends in order to get them), it’s that there’s been a definite shift in whitey rock. Away from big dumb bombast and towards gentleness, understatement, and quirk. Unfortunately for us, Train are no good at any of these traits.


3. Taio Cruz - 'Dynamite'

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Let me count the hooks. One: the piano riff punctuated with drum hits that begins the song. Two: the way the first line of the verse ends with a hooky vocal “ay-o” before repeating the melody hook on “let’s go”. That’s two big hooks introduced within the first 20 seconds of the song. Three: thirty seconds in, Cruz raps a repetitive, catchy rhythm, rhyming “dance dance dance dance” with “plans plans plans plans”. Also, notice how, after having heard the repetition of “dance” and “plans”, the line “I’m wearing all my favourite brands brands brands brands" changes the rhythm around a little, and gives the previously monotone rap a (noticeably autotuned) melody. This change might well be a hook in itself.

Four: the line “and it goes on and on and on" is catchy in itself, but also very effective in the way it builds up to a climax, melody rising and tension building. Five: the song seemingly takes an age to get to the actual chorus - where you finally hear the word “dynamite” in the lyric for the first time - but when you hear it, yup: another hook. Phew. That’s at least five separate hooks – each repeated a few times - in slightly over a minute. The beauty - or Satanic deviousness, depending on your viewpoint - of all these hooks is that one of them is gonna get you. Most pop songs do their fishing with a hook or two, but this song is like one of those deep sea trawlers with hooked fishing lines that trail for miles.


2. Usher feat. Will.I.Am - 'OMG'

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Much like the Black Eyed Peas’ previous single, 'Meet Me Halfway' (and much of will.i.am’s production work in general), 'OMG' is a gawky mishmash of 4 or 5 different elements that blend together about as well as custard and fish fingers. And with similar nauseating results.

There doesn’t seem to be much musical logic in 'OMG's dynamic, nor tension and release (which great pop songs like 'Single Ladies' and 'She Loves You' do expertly). Iit features desultory robotic drum patterns that aim for the clever syncopations of Timbaland or Missy Elliott, but mostly end up sounding tinny and dated. Perhaps the worst offender to musical taste in the song is the glaringly incongruous football chant which provides a counterpoint to the chorus melody. Considering the style of the song (club R&B), the lyrics (smooth loverboy platitudes), and the general feel of the tune (sparse synthetic jitteriness), this seems wildly inappropriate. Everything else is so quantized, autotuned and robotic that some actual human group chanting scans as bizarre - the audio equivalent of the uncanny valley). To hell with taste!


1. Eminem feat. Rihanna – 'Love The Way You Lie'

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'Love The Way You Lie', with all its violent angst and burning people alive, is more metaphor than literal ‘meaning it’ (thankfully, for a song which skirts around the topic of domestic abuse). But it doesn’t take a particularly smutty mind to see the sexual connotations in all that tying to the bed and burning alive.

In fact, “Love The Way You Lie” expresses a particularly Capital-R Romantic view of love. For the Romantics (and we’re talking 19th century types like Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte, rather than the band that did 'What I Like About You'), love was tragic; irrational and uncontrollable. Think Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights – he was a brooding, violent type without many selling points and they never really got along. But still they were drawn to each other, almost animalistically, irrationally, and their union inevitably ended in tragedy and death. One of the great tragic love stories. Apparently.

This Romantic view of love never really went away – our current cultural mega-phenomenon, Twilight, is Capital-R Romantic to the core, and very much like Wuthering Heights in a lot of ways. And for better or worse, I don’t need to explain Twilight to you. 'Love The Way You Lie' fits very comfortably into this Romantic paradigm.

Tim Byron

READ OUR INTRO AND PART ONE OF THE TOP 20 SELLING SINGLES IN AUSTRALIA FOR 2010 HERE.