2010: A Year In Singles Part One

2010 was a pretty great year for music, personally, I probably purchased more albums this year than at any time since the 90's.  While I generally hate writing about music, let's go through my favorite new songs from the pasty year, the order is unimportatn, other than the fact they make a nice playlist this way.


1. Adam WarRock - The Silver Age (f/ Tribe One) from The War For Infinity:  It's tough for someone to rap about comics oriented stuff and avoid getting labeled something with a derisive "nerd" attached to it.  Eugene Ahn avoids this deftly with the single off his excellent concept album, re-purposing Marvel's The Infinity Gauntlet to a world where the dispute was not settled with fisticuffs but rap battles.  The single, though it is separate from the album's story helps to inform the foundation on which it was built.

2.  Gorillaz - On Melancholy Hill from Plastic Beach:   It's tough to pick one track from Plastic Beach because it is truly a complete album, one that has a form of sonic cohesion that's rare in pop music today.  I tdo realize there is an overarching story line to the album (and indeed all of Gorillaz work), but I can't make heads of tails of it without viewing their (fantastic) videos as an accompaniment.  This is easily my favorite album of the year.

3.  Kanye West - Runaway from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy:  To paraphrase Aziz Ansari's description for someone else, Kanye West is an brilliant rapper/crazy person.  While his latest is not my favorite of his releases, Runaway is a pretty undeniable single.  My only wish is that it had come out in the Summer, since this is windows down on a hot day  music if there ever was any.


4.  Passion Pit - Little Secrets from Manners:  Speaking of Summer music, this song is it to a "T".  While the album it comes from is certainly good, this is one of those singles that just stands above the crowd.  Not too much else to say.

5.  Daft Punk - Derezzed from Tron: Legacy OST:  While I would have prferred a "proper" Daft Punk album this year, their rollicking soundtrack to the Tron sequel fits the bill quite nicely.


6.  Robyn - Dancing On My Own from Body Talk:  this year I really came around on pop music, and robyn's Body talk EP's (now collected into on fantastic album) really were the final nail in the coffin.  The fact that Lady Gaga gets as much press as she does for doing so much recycling and wearing meat dresses while Robyn simply makes great music in the trenches and is ignored by the mainstream is pretty depressing.  Regardless, there is great pop music out there and that's a great thing.

7.  Cee-Lo Green - Fuck You from The Lady Killer:  It's easy to write this song off as being cheap, "hur hur he says 'fuck' a lot" but, damn, this is a fine ass song.  That it's gotten several conservative commenters upset that someone other than Dick Cheney is using the f-word only makes it sweeter.

So that wraps up the first half of what I loved this year, tomorrow I'll come back with part 2 and the more rock-oriented half of the list.