2010 In The Rearview, Epilogue: Pa’ Fuera, Pa’ La Calle

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This brief look back at some of the biggest hits of 2010 by no means represents the totality of my music consumption throughout the year; it’s only the portion of it I could face writing about. But it’s not unrepresentative, either: 2010, in my personal listening history, was the Year That Pop Broke, the year when the music I heard on the radio consumed my attention, my listening hours, and my writing habits far more profoundly than any other.

But I’ve only talked about the music I heard on two of the three radio stations I listened to regularly this year. The third has been ignored entirely, for two reasons: first, because I don’t feel like I’m very qualified to talk about it with any authority, and second, because even if I was qualified I would have to spend so much time explaining context and literally translating the song’s meanings into words that the readers of this blog could understand that getting around to talking about the joy they brought me would be secondary at best. Maybe I’m wrong; maybe you listen to Latin Pop all the time and are just as reluctant to talk about it as I am.

I chose an Enrique Iglesias song to represent this bit of navel-gazing because he’s had a hell of a year. Not only did he have the biggest Latin hit of the year with “Cuando Me Enamoro,” a duet with the amazing Juan Luis Guerra and a telenovela theme — it’s hardly unusual for him to dominate those playlists, just like his dad used to — but he broke back into the English-language charts for the first time in almost a decade, with (of course) an assist from the only Spanish speaker Anglophone listeners have had much time for lately. I was actually surprised when “I Like It” became a hit (I gave it a thumbs-down on the Singles Jukebox), but those whooshing synths and Enrique’s elastic, treated voice, too gleeful to be quite as creepy as the lyrics want him to be, won me over in the end.

I live in Phoenix, where the DJs on the pop music stations have vaguely Hispanic accents, where pop music is in fact consumed by a largely Hispanic population (poor people everywhere love pop; it’s the middle class who scramble to get away from it), so I don’t quite hear the unbridgeable gulf between Latin Pop and Mainstream Pop (to use Billboard’s eyeroll-inducing but intelligible terms) that my opposite numbers in the East and North might. Latin Pop stations are the only place where new rock & roll turns up on the radio anymore (which I’m still enough of an old white guy to appreciate), and the pop-bachata mixed with smooth r&b of Aventura and Prince Royce represents a whole new way forward that I’m betting the first English-language singer to try will find unexpectedly rewarding. (C’mon, Kells. I dare you.)

Below you’ll find a link to my favorite 77 songs of 2010, the songs I listened to the most frequently and loved the most heartily. Why 77? Because that’s all I could think of. Why these songs and not others? Because they’re the ones I heard. I read people talking about Vampire Weekend and LCD Soundsystem and Janelle Monáe and Big Boi and Waka Flocka Flame and so forth all year, but I was rarely moved to check them out and when I did they didn’t stick.  The list below is what I heard on the radio, and what I heard for the Singles Jukebox, and (much less frequently) what I heard on my own initiative. One reason I’ve been hesitant to call myself a critic is that I don’t care — possibly because no one’s paying me to care — about keeping up with new stuff from a wide variety of genres. I believe all music is worth talking about; but what with the Entirety of History to think about, some of it will have to get sorted out later.

Anyway, I’ll be talking about a bunch of the songs listed below when I catch up to 2010 on my Latin #1s blog. The rest may or may not get discussed any time soon. I took a very broadminded approach to what counted as 2010, the songs are in vague single-release-date order, except for when they aren’t (sometimes it’s when the official video was uploaded to Youtube, or the first date of charting on the Billboard Top 40), and if it’s narrower in focus than a lot of year-end lists it’s no less fiercely loved.

I think that’s everything I wanted to say. Be safe out there.

Download here. »

1. DJ Earworm “United State Of Pop 2009 (Blame It On The Pop)”
2. Ke$ha “TiK ToK”
3. La 5a. Estación “Me Dueles”
4. Lady Gaga “Bad Romance”
5. Sleigh Bells “Crown On the Ground”
6. Orianthi “According To You”
7. Adam Lambert “Whataya Want From Me”
8. Aventura “Dile Al Amor”
9. Julieta Venegas “Bien O Mal”
10. Justin Bieber ft. Ludacris “Baby”
11. Prince Royce “Stand By Me”
12. Lady Gaga ft. Beyoncé “Telephone”
13. B.o.B ft. Bruno Mars “Nothin’ On You”
14. Shontelle “Impossible”
15. Ke$ha ft. 3OH!3 “Blah Blah Blah”
16. Rihanna “Rude Boy”
17. Shakira “Gitana”
18. Belinda ft. Pitbull “Egoísta”
19. Ludacris ft. Nicki Minaj “My Chick Bad”
20. Cypress Hill ft. Pitbull & Marc Anthony “Armada Latina”
21. La Roux “Bulletproof”
22. Usher ft. will.i.am “OMG”
23. Chino & Nacho “Mi Niña Bonita”
24. David Guetta & Chris Willis ft. Fergie & LMFAO “Gettin’ Over You”
25. Dierks Bentley “Up On The Ridge”
26. B.o.B ft. Hayley Williams “Airplanes”
27. Christina Aguilera “Not Myself Tonight”
28. Nicki Minaj ft. Sean Garrett “Massive Attack”
29. Far*East Movement ft. Cataracts & Dev “Like A G6”
30. A.B. Quintanilla’s Kumbia All-Starz ft. Voltio, Marciano & DJ Kane “Hipnótika”
31. Paramore “The Only Exception”
32. Enrique Iglesias ft Juan Luis Guerra “Cuando Me Enamoró”
33. Jerrod Niemann “Lover, Lover”
34. Enrique Iglesias ft. Pitbull “I Like It”
35. Baby Bash ft. Marty James “Fantasy Girl”
36. Drake “Find Your Love”
37. Shakira ft. Freshlyground “Waka Waka (Esto Es África)”
38. Ivy Queen  “La Vida Es Así”
39. Katy Perry ft. Snoop Dogg “California Gurls”
40. M.I.A. “XXXO”
41. Sleigh Bells “Rill Rill”
42. Aventura “El Malo”
43. Lady Gaga “Alejandro”
44. Miley Cyrus “Can’t Be Tamed”
45. Natasha Bedingfield “Touch”
46. Javiera Mena “Hasta La Verdad”
47. Carrie Underwood “Undo It”
48. Nicki Minaj “Your Love”
49. Robyn “Dancing On My Own”
50. Juanes “Yerbatero”
51. Flo Rida ft. David Guetta “Club Can’t Handle Me”
52. Sunny Sweeney “From A Table Away”
53. Jazmine Sullivan “Holding You Down (Goin’ In Circles)”
54. B.o.B ft. Rivers Cuomo “Magic”
55. Katy Perry “Teenage Dream”
56. Trey Songz ft. Nicki Minaj “Bottoms Up”
57. Taio Cruz “Dynamite”
58. Taylor Swift “Mine”
59. Belinda “Dopamina”
60. Don Omar ft. Lucenzo “Danza Kuduro”
61. Nelly “Just A Dream”
62. Eminem ft. Rihanna “Love The Way You Lie”
63. Cee Lo Green “Fuck You!”
64. Belle & Sebastian ft. Carey Mulligan “Write About Love”
65. Rihanna “Only Girl (In The World)”
66. Shakira ft. Dizzee Rascal “Loca”
67. Kanye West ft. Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Bon Iver & Nicki Minaj “Monster”
68. Rye Rye ft. M.I.A. “Sunshine”
69. P!nk “Raise Your Glass”
70. Pitbull “Bon Bon”
71. Keri Hilson “Pretty Girl Rock”
72. Pitbull “Orgullo”
73. Ke$ha “Cannibal”
74. Taylor Swift “Speak Now”
75. Black Eyed Peas “The Time (Dirty Bit)”
76. Enrique Iglesias ft. Ludacris & DJ Frank E “Tonight (I’m Fuckin’ You)”
77. Diddy-Dirty Money ft. Skylar Grey “I’m Coming Home”