Redbrick

2009 in 60 minutes

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Written by E A Vernon and Alex Spencer

To lis­ten to the full 60 minute playlist on Spo­tify, just click here.

BLACK EYED PEAS – BOOM BOOM POW

Shame­ful; guilty of a lot of the the year’s worst musi­cal crimes; con­tains the lyric “I’m so 3008, you so 200-late” despite com­ing out in 2009. But – best pop catch­phrase of the year. Right? Right.

BRITNEY SPEARS – 3

Pop so sug­ary that it’s unques­tion­ably 500%+ of my RDA. An instant hit – the load syn­thy out­burts lodged deep into the grey squig­gles of my brain. Brit­ney com­pels you over to the dark side, ‘liv­ing in sin is the new thing’. Fo sho.

CASCADA – EVACUATE THE DANCEFLOOR

A bril­liant tune from the ever shit-pop Cas­cada. Although despite hav­ing danced to it numer­ous time (in exclu­sive clubs such as Select’n’Save), I still can’t really make out the lyrics. Eval­u­ate the dancefloor?

DIZZEE RASCAL – DIRTEE CASH

Yeah, it’s not Bonkers (over­played) or Hol­i­day (failed sin­gle pushed until peo­ple believed they must like it). There’s a lit­tle some­thing more to Dirtee Cash; the play­ful Ras­cal of old strik­ing out at the world at a speed that mean you don’t notice. And that title can be only be a dig at the haters.

EMPIRE OF THE SUN – WALKING ON A DREAM

Blissed-out, just on the pop­ulist side of the psy­che­delic bor­der­line, as dreamy as the title sug­gests. The song feels like a lucky coin­ci­dence, that it couldn’t have come together any other way with­out falling apart and being rub­bish. But isn’t that line what pop is all about?

KID CUDI VS. CROOKERS - DAY ‘N’ NITE (REMIX)

Per­fectly generic, but so won­der­fully com­pe­tent. Catchy cho­rus, inter­est­ingly orig­i­nal use of sound and a puz­zling incor­po­ra­tion of alarms. Also, a video with girls’ clothes com­ing off. Because the genre demands it!

LA ROUX – BULLETPROOF

For the few memory-impaired read­ers who don’t recall, Elly Jack­son left the world of obscu­rity and guilty indie-crush for big fame with In For The Kill. It killed La Roux’s cred a bit. Bul­let­proof is the unex­pected not-quite-overplayed hit. And at least she isn’t Littleboots.

LILY ALLEN – THE FEAR

Lily Allen makes a come­back with this won­der­fully cut­ting song, catchy with just-clever-enough lyrics, then pro­duces a mediocre album. Stan­dard. Thanks, Lily!

LADY GAGA – PAPARAZZI

Def­i­nitely my favourite dish of all the songs served in the musi­cal ban­quet that is The Fame. Surely I can men­tion the accom­pa­ny­ing video, safely assum­ing the major­ity of stu­dent have seen it? It’s a mas­ter­piece of its own. A mini-story mix­ing the best of the best: fash­ion, pop, sex, poi­son and mur­der. Lady Gaga has absolutely owned the charts this year. Hail the new Princess of Pop!

PRODIGY – WARRIOR’S DANCE

‘The dancefloor/You and me, ’cause that’s what it is for’, indeed. Over the course of 4 min­utes, a stan­dard dance song is twisted into a full-blown Prodigy anthem. Some­where between the two, a good song is created.

SHAKIRA – SHE-WOLF

Like the stereo­typ­i­cal pop-female she is, Shakira sings about sex. But, damn, does she do it well. Man­ag­ing the gen­uine feat of sound­ing like a pop song from the future, She-Wolf mixes high-end mod­ern pop, the sounds of Crys­tal Cas­tles, The Knife, and pure undi­luted insan­ity. It’s gen­uinely deranged; a release of all the stuff the song talks about — that repressed sex and ani­mal­ism. The kind of song which makes me want to talk about cathar­sis, com­puter glitches and tear­ing at my clothes.

TINCHY STRYDER (FT. N-DUBZ) – NUMBER 1

Self-fulfilling prophecy. The Tinchy one takes a lot of the campy fun out of Dappy & co. But, at that cost, comes a more focused, ass-shakeable ver­sion of the N-Dubz hit machine.

THE LONELY ISLAND (FT. T-PAIN) – ON A BOAT

Pin­points every cliché in the hyper-macho mate­ri­al­ist hip-hop book, whilst man­ag­ing to still bring T-Pain on board (yeah, that was a pun.) Bye bye, auto­tuned R&B, you’re now offi­cially irrelevant.

YEAH YEAH YEAHS – ZERO

Yeah Yeah Yeahs drop gui­tars, get synths. It’s the nor­mal 3rd album rein­ven­tion, right? No. This is amaz­ing, if you dis­agree, heads will roll.

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This article was posted on December 4th, 2009 at 6:29 am.