A varied many things happened this year in American music. Some good, some bad, some confusing as all hell. This was the year that pop’s finest got together to make a terrible song to benefit Haiti, the world decided that high school students singing sparkly covers of songs were more appealing than the actual songs themselves, and several bands that nobody gave a damn about for many years (Fuel, Bush, Yellowcard) engaged in lucrative tours. Mostly however, vocals became all the more irrelevant with the continued evil reign of auto-tune.

Basically your mileage may vary on how good a year for music 2010 was.

So as we enter the next year, hoping 2011 will bring a brighter future with more envelopes pushed, and less fevered egos. (As long as Kanye West is still alive, don’t expect the latter to happen any time soon.) For now though, I, and fellow music buffs ThornBrain and TheDramaticMonarch present a look back at the year, in the form of a quick retrospective of 16 of 2010’s biggest songs.

Yes, I realize it’s probably several days too late to make this sort of thing, but TOO LATE, I POSTED IT ANYWAY.

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• “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence & The Machine
A driving chamber pop banger from British siren, Florence Welch, built around blasting beats and a repeating harp.

Sawtooth says:
That this song became a hit gives me hope for the future. That in a world where every female singer is trying to be Madonna, Dolly Parton, or some variation of soul diva, this tune would be a hit. I like Welch’s vocal style as well. Brings to mind the best parts of Lene Lovich, Grace Slick, and Exene Cervenka from X.

TheDramaticMonarch says:
When I first heard a snippet of this song during an ad for some TV show on Showtime, (or was it Showcase?) I immediately thought that Joss Stone was trying to make a comeback. Turns out that Florence Welch has a little more in common with Fiona Apple than Stone in the vocals department. Bluesy in a few places, a serene upper register in others and plenty of fire is injected to the adrenaline fueled chorus. She easily has one of the more captivating voices in the pop landscape. It has a quiet strength that sneaks up on you with a really punchy chorus. At the same time, it’s really catchy but miraculously doesn’t make you want to claw it out of your brain.

ThornBrain says:
Genuinely impressed! Florence seems like the kind of artist who could easily overdo it if she wanted to, be it with her vocals or the arrangements, but she doesn’t step over that boundary with this track. The strength of her voice and the energy of the music are at their perfect peak. Passionate and gutsy.

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• “Power” by Kanye West
The first single off of West’s new album, built around a King Crimson sample, and tribal-influenced percussion.

Sawtooth says:
I never might have expected a King Crimson-sampling hip-hop song to sound any good. Normally I’m not a big fan of sampling massive parts of a whole song like that. Every time I listen to Kanye West though it just makes me wish that people would go back to doing it that way instead of just sparse synths and drum machines. Whatever bad things you have to say about West he still has the best production of any rapper out there. I just don’t see “masterpiece” in this tune, like so many music periodicals have been gushing about, though…

TheDramaticMonarch says:
I don’t really consider myself much of an ardent follower of Kanye West but I had no idea there was more than one version of “Power” out there! Ah well, I decided to settle on the version featuring Dwele. Upon listening, I found that the song was a tad overproduced. Yes, there is something rather entrancing about that prevalent choir but I felt as though they were overpowering most of Kanye’s rapping. Shouldn’t the words be the meat of a rap song, anyway? The only segments I was able to make out were some navel-gazing musings from Kanye about the public’s perception of him as an egomaniacal asshole. Points for self-awareness? Other than the “21st Century Schizoid Man” sample, I can’t really say “Power” took any kind of hold over me.

ThornBrain says:
Kanye’s sneer makes him sound kind of douchey, [redundant considering who this is, but I just wish I didn’t hear it so much in rappers these days], but this might be one of the least vomit-inducing hip-hop tracks I’ve heard in a while. Lyrics seem to be the [sub]standard [shit] posturing you hear everyday, (wank me a fucking river, pal), but the thick underlying bass, solid percussion rhythm, and airy background chorus drew me in before I even knew what hit me. Dude’s got some production chops.

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• “Telephone” by Lady Gaga & Beyonce Knowles
Pop’s reigning weirdo sings about being too busy dancing to answer her phone alongside RnB’s reigning diva.

Sawtooth says:
Meh. That’s all I can say about Lady Gaga. If I wanted to hear female electro music, I can think of tons of other artists who do it infinitely better and don’t look like they’re trying too hard to be “challenging.” (Bjork, Goldfrapp, Ladytron, etc.) It’s really just a plain dance song at it’s roots, but I despise it all the same for all the headache-inducing rhymes in it.

YOU CAN’T RHYME “PARTY” with “RINGING”! OR “STATION” WITH “DANCING”! YOU JUST CAN’T!!!

Oh yeah, and Beyonce is in it too… For maybe half a minute.

TheDramaticMonarch says:
If you stripped away all the theatrics and product placement laden ten minute music video, it’s another run-of-the-mill, generic pop song that’s practically indistinguishable from any other tailor-made “club banger” clogging up the radio. You could assign the song to someone like Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey or Fergie and this song would still sound like a carbon copy of all the other sassy dance floor flooders. It simply has no personality of its own. To add insult to sparkly injury, Beyonce is a superfluous addition. I highly doubt it would make a huge difference in the song’s flow if Beyonce was swapped out of the song and Lady Gaga just sang her lines. Bottom line, there is nothing ground breaking or original about “Telephone”, much like Lady Gaga herself.

ThornBrain says:
Finally something unlikable! You know, my policy with Lady Gaga is this: if a few years pass and she’s doing something else, be it a different music style or different profession altogether, THEN I’ll be able to look back and say, “Yes, she was just having a laugh the entire time, and I respect her for fooling everyone”. If she’s still cranking out music as vapid and obnoxious as this [eh-eh-eh-go-fuck-your-self], then no, that excuse is as bogus as her Grammy nomination. Kind of surprised that she has a better singing voice than Beyonce, but that’s probably just the auto-tune, (love the forced glitch effect they sometimes do with it, or the stupid voices). Any and all connections between her and David Bowie or anyone else that supposedly influenced her is a direct attack on said person.

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• “Tight Rope” by Janelle Monae & Big Boi
A bouncy R&B track with jazzy bongos and throwbacks to Motown.

Sawtooth says:
Goddamn do I love me some retro music. With all the horn stabs and funky basslines I could see this being done by several different singers from that bygone 50s/60s era that it’s inspired by. It loses some points from me for being a “do the-“ dance song, which we have far too many of. Big Boi’s rap section feels pretty tacked on as well. Still. Good song. Kinda reminds me of “Wonderful Night” by Fatboy Slim.

TheDramaticMonarch says:
My first glimpse of Janelle Monae came in the form of a special guest performance on “So You Think You Can Dance”. (Oh shush, over there!) Most of the guest performers shelled out on this show tend to be of the limply choreographed, little dressed and lip-synched variety. Then along comes Monae in her tailored black suit, tie, saddle shoes and spiffy beehive, slip sliding and singing her guts out…at the same time! “Holy crap!” I shouted at my TV. In a sea of airbrushed and autotuned pop tartlets, out leaps this gal who can actually sing and dance. LIVE. When it comes to the song by itself, I still found it fun, bouncy and lively as all get out. With the retro, old school Motown flair and modern flourishes (in the form of Outkast’s Big Boi), I get the impression that this song could have been released 20 years ago and it would still feel fresh and snappy. I’m not sure what the rest of her material is like but based on the strength of this song alone, I really hope Janelle Monae sticks around.

Of course, knowing my track record in predicting the face of modern pop music, 20 years time will have Janelle Monae competing on “Dancing With the Stars 48” while Katy Perry is inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Sigh.

ThornBrain says:
Another strong, left field impression. Repetitive as Janelle’s vocals are, and generic as the “let’s dance” lyrics are, I can’t deny the strong funk backing, (more emphasis on rhythm than melody or tune, which is fine by me). I also enjoy hearing female R&B singers who forgo singing every note they can reach in favor of belting out a strong vocal with a voice of angelic silk, so the repetitive nature of her vocals are also forgiven. Big Boi almost got the same treatment, but he decided keeping in-time wasn’t badass enough. Overall easy on the ears, hard on the adrenaline. I like it that way.

As “Careful”, the opening track to Brand New Eyes played, I braced for another Paramore style album; an album full of young female pop vocals that sell a sub-par pop-rock band’s studio tracks. Throughout their career, their album material has mostly just bored me. Their B-sides and some demos have been the only thing that have kept me coming back when they put some new music out.

The next two songs didn’t improve my opinion of the band’s creativity, but Hayley Williams certainly improved her songwriting and singing. For example, there’s an anger in the vocals that hasn’t been heard from her before, and it’s not just coating the entire song; it comes in at the right points, which tells me she’s writing songs with more emotion now.

“Brick By Boring Brick” and “Turn It Off” actually had more experimenting in the instrumental tracks than I had expected to hear at this point. It was refreshing to hear that, sort of. They were clinging on to their distortion-driven riffs, and that has always plagued their songs. “The Only Exception” was a first as far as songs on Paramore albums go; a fully acoustic track. It sounded very nice and like something they should do with their music more often.

“Feeling Sorry” brought an end to the instrumentally creative cluster of the album. “Looking Up” was another average fan pleaser song, and although “Where the Lines Overlap” had some chimes or some high synthesized notes that accented the song well, it just wasn’t enough to break away from the “average Paramore sound”.

The last two songs on the album, “Misguided Ghosts” and “All I Wanted”, were quite a surprising way to end the album. They are almost what I had been hoping the band would produce for quite a while now. “Misguided Ghosts” has some excellent acoustic guitar playing, and “All I wanted” had some amazing vocals coupled with guitar work that had some nice tone to it, and it steadily grew as the song progressed; something I don’t recall them ever trying out until this song.

Overall, it probably won’t be getting Paramore any new fans that hated them before this album, but it’s a step in the right direction for the band. Their music is starting to mature, and it looks like their fans will have a band to grow up with.

Their B-sides for this album mostly consist of acoustic versions of songs on the album. “Decode”, however, was an original song, and it had a better guitar tone than all the songs on the album; that sort of “hiding the more experimental music” seems to be typical of Paramore. Most of the tracks were more musically diverse when recorded as an acoustic version, and they seem to have much more replay value. The band seemed to have spent more time on this album’s acoustic tracks than on previous albums. They still retained the structure of their originals, and possibly even the tempo and some vocal tracks. They probably could have thrown in a demo or two like they did for the MVI version of Riot!, but five studio acoustic tracks is quite a feat for most bands. It’s a decent set of tracks.