the top ten best hit songs of 2012 (REDUX) (VIDEO)

ABOUT FUCKING TIME I GET THIS DAMN THING OUT...

And now to get back on schedule. Lots to do, folks, stay tuned!

the top ten best hit songs of 2012 (REDUX)

So this top ten list is going to be a little different than the previous few I've put together - mostly because I've made it before.

So let's back up a little - as many of you know, I started on YouTube in July of 2013, but I had begun writing about music a good two years earlier, first on Facebook and in 2012 on my personal blog, where I started by assembling my list of the top ten best hit songs of 2012. And while I've made reference to that year on Billboard BREAKDOWN and in year-end lists, I've never actually converted that list to video, which is what I'm going to be doing today... with a twist. See, my opinions have evolved and changed over the past six years and I figured it wouldn't be a bad step to revisit the year-end Hot 100 of that year and see if my greater critical acumen and hindsight had shifted my opinion... and while for the most part it hasn't, I am going to making a few changes from that original list, so there's no guarantee you'll know what shows up here.

But if there is one thing that has been solidified by this relisten, it's that 2012 stands head-and-shoulders above the majority of this decade with some of the best hit songs of the 2010s. Pop was still riding out the club boom to a fair amount of success, country was only in the early years of the growth of bro-country and landed some real quality on the charts, R&B was notching some genuinely forward-thinking tunes, and hip-hop... okay, maybe more of a transitional year overall, but there were highlights. But what makes the 2012 chart so vibrant was the indie boom, a flashpoint of out-of-nowhere crossovers from indie folk, pop and rock that for a brief shining moment redefined what a hit could be in the mainstream. And while it's dispiriting how much of it would fizzle away in the coming year - and indeed, if we're looking at a theme for this list it would be high points of potential never quite achieved again - it still left us with a list of tracks where I actually had to cut some great songs, something you can't say about years like, say, 2016. So as always, the rules are that the song must debut on the year-end Hot 100 in this year, and let's get started with...

video review: 'psycadelik thoughtz' by b.o.b.

So this thing happened. At least it was better than Underground Luxury, if that says anything.

Next up... hmm, I want to cover Jess Glynne, but that Mick Jenkins project... we'll see. Stay tuned!

album review: 'psycadelik thoughtz' by b.o.b.

I can't imagine what it might feel like for a rapper who loses their hype, especially one who made it big for a second in the mainstream before it all fell apart. And the more I've reflected upon the career of B.o.B., Atlanta MC that was once being compared to Andre 3000 for his flow, eclectic fascination with other genres, and guitar skills, the more I'm starting to think this is the case. After a series of well-received mixtapes he smashed into the scene with The Adventures of Bobby Ray, which despite being pretty uneven did show off a rapper with real chops, a unique brand of production, and a fair amount of charisma that could play to the mainstream. Which of course was what happened, with huge songs like 'Airplanes' and 'Nothing On You' and 'Magic'. He followed it up with Strange Clouds in 2012, which was just as uneven but still had some solid songs I really love to this day, including 'So Good' and 'Where Are You (B.o.B. vs. Bobby Ray)'.

And then it all fell apart. His buzz seemed to evaporate without good singles, and as hip-hop went for the darker trap sound he struggled to keep up. But 'struggle' might be the wrong word, because I reviewed his 2013 record Underground Luxury and it sucked, not just because of messy trap beats but because B.o.B. was just wallowing in lazy, badly written hedonism. For a rapper who once had such imagination to devolve into that was incredibly disappointing for me, and for once it seems like everyone else agreed, with many critics trashing the album and the sales being miserable.

So what do you do when you're a rapper who has lost your hype? Well, from my point of view you've got one of four options: you retire; you slink back into the indie scene and try to rebuild your cred, you stay signed to the major label and hope to God you can follow trends well enough to churn out hits at the expense of your identity, or - and this came out of nowhere - you decide to title your next record Psycadelik Thoughtz and drop it with no promotion or lead-off single in the hopes surprise will draw curiosity, especially with a rumoured change in sound: go big or go home. And I was worried here: Tyga already tried this strategy with his long-delayed surprise release, and nobody seemed to care, and he had hype going in. What was B.o.B. going to deliver?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 20, 2015 (VIDEO)

Completely forgot to post this. Oops!

Next up, Surf - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 20, 2015

You know, after the past few weeks – and somehow falling behind again in my reviews – it’s nice to actually have a new Hot 100 that’s actually fairly lightweight in terms of new songs, most of which I’ve already heard before in some capacity. It’s one of the breather moments you get as summer starts to settle into gear and the album release schedule eases back a bit, at least for the pop charts.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 24, 2015 (VIDEO)

You know, I actually thought this episode would be a quicker edit than it was. Go figure.

Okay, I think I'm ready for some Fall Out Boy now, bring it on!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 24, 2015

This week, things finally seemed to get back to normal - and to be honest, I was expecting the charts to get a lot worse this week thanks to an injection of new album tracks from reviews I did last week. Instead, it seems like the opposite is true, as no additional Rae Sremmurd tracks landed on the Hot 100 - thank God - and Meghan Trainor had losses across the board. In fact, for the first week ever on Billboard BREAKDOWN, we have no returning entries, just brand-new songs - granted, with more Chris Brown than is healthy for anyone, but hey, we're getting Jhene Aiko, another Fall Out Boy single, and a punk cover of Taylor Swift, I'll take it!

video review: 'underground luxury' by b.o.b.

So this is it: my 100th video album review! Shame the album isn't better, though.

Next up... hmm, we'll see. I've got at least two more albums to cover before my year-end lists, so stay tuned!

album review: 'underground luxury' by b.o.b.

One of the first album reviews I ever wrote for my blog was for the sophomore album Strange Clouds by B.o.B., and I've always had a bit of a fondness for the guy. I've liked his inventive production that blends southern hip-hop trends with off-beat folk and futuristic beats, his flair for bombast and killer pop hooks that are striking and memorable, his flow and wordplay calling back to that of Andre 3000, and his lyrical dexterity in constructing an intricate and compelling song. That last album had a loose thematic progression exploring isolation and coming to grips with success, and while I'd argue the record was shaky, inconsistent, and frequently undermined by guest stars who didn't contribute well, it ultimately managed to stick the landing with the career defining thesis statement of 'Where Are You (B.o.B. vs. Bobby Ray)'. The song remains a big favourite of mine for the superb piano hook and the fact that it proved B.o.B. was his own harshest critic. 

And thus, I've always tried to keep my eye on B.o.B. throughout this year. Fortunately, it wasn't all that difficult, given that he had a hit lurking in the Billboard Hot 100 for most of this year. Unfortunately, that song was 'HeadBand' featuring 2 Chainz, which was only really notable for a listless and minimalist presentation in a year where most mainstream rap was listless and minimalist, where 2 Chainz delivered a load of punchlines I could have sworn he already used in one of his other myriad guest appearances this year, and B.o.B. delivered two of the most lazy performances I had ever heard. It was a disconcerting sign of things to come, and thus I wasn't really looking forward to Underground Luxury, which the record label had decided to dump in mid-December (already a bad sign). Granted, he's still a good rapper and producer, but was the energy or intellect going to survive the transition on a record which he called his most 'effortless' to create?

the top ten best hit songs of 2012

I've got to be honest here - when I wrote about the worst songs of 2012, I couldn't write about them all in one sitting. And it wasn't just because it was long and I needed a break - it was more because I got some damn depressed trying to parse my way through the worst of 2012's pop music that I needed some kind of break - any kind of break - just to reinvigorate my spirits.

Fortunately for me, I don't think I'll have that much of a problem here, because today we're going to look at the best of 2012 - which, if I'm being completely honest, was a really great year for the pop charts. It's not hard to see why, particularly if you look at the year in context with 2011. I've written before on the twin axes of pop music (here, if you're curious), which are maturity and intelligence. And while material tends to travel up and down these 'axes' in parallel, the collapse of club music in 2011 showed the first sign of a divergence in the pop music scene: music that was mature and intelligent, and music that was immature and stupid. 

Now, let me make this absolutely clear: you can have great pop music that is both immature and stupid, but in general, you tend to see greater quality, innovation, and interesting breakthroughs with music that's smarter and more mature because the subject area is broader and the people crafting the music tend to be more insightful. And I'm not confining this to genre either: just because an act is country or crunk doesn't mean they don't have some wry intelligence, and just because an act is indie rock doesn't mean they're all that deep or insightful or mature.

And since I'm a fan of great pop music, I was thrilled to see this axis divergence, and even more thrilled to see a ton of great pop music spring up from the doldrums of the club music scene. And as much as I'd like to shout praise to the heavens for the indie rock explosion that saw plenty of extremely solid acts rocket to the top, I can't help but acknowledge that there were great country, hip-hop, rap, and even mainstream pop acts that surprised me with their quality.

But before I get in all that deep into the material from this year, let's quickly revisit my list of best hit songs from 2011:

10. 'Jar Of Hearts' by Christina Perri
9. 'Fucking Perfect' by Pink
8. 'Coming Home' by Diddy - Dirty Money ft. Skylar Grey
7. 'All Of The Lights' by Kanye West
6. 'The Show Goes On' by Lupe Fiasco
5. 'You And I' by Lady Gaga
4. 'Fuck You' by Cee Lo Green
3. 'Rolling In The Deep' by Adele
2. 'Someone Like You' by Adele
1. 'Colder Weather' by The Zac Brown Band

And, as usual, upon reflection, I'd probably make a few changes to this list:


10. 'Jar Of Hearts' by Christina Perri 'Stereo Hearts' by The Gym Class Heroes ft. Adam Levine
9. 'Fucking Perfect' by Pink 'Back To December' by Taylor Swift 
8. 'Coming Home' by Diddy - Dirty Money ft. Skylar Grey 'Blow' by Ke$ha
7. 'All Of The Lights' by Kanye West
6. 'The Show Goes On' by Lupe Fiasco
5. 'You And I' by Lady Gaga
4. 'Fuck You' by Cee Lo Green
3. 'Rolling In The Deep' by Adele
2. 'Someone Like You' by Adele
1. 'Colder Weather' by The Zac Brown Band

Huh, not that many changes, really. Part of that is an indictment on how great all of these songs are, but part of it is also the fact that all of these songs represented the best of their genres and the best of growing trends on the charts. 

And if I'm being completely blunt, I don't know what part of my mind thought it was a good idea to put both 'Jar Of Hearts' (a song I've really soured on in recent months) and 'Fucking Perfect' (which has worn out a fair bit of its welcome) on the list, and it wasn't hard to swap them out for 'Stereo Hearts' (a song that grew on me due to some clever metaphors and an incredibly catchy chorus courtesy of Adam Levine at his best) and 'Blow' (a song that has problems, to be sure, but builds surprisingly well and is punchy enough to be a damn great dance/work-out track). And really, 'Coming Home' isn't a bad track in the slightest, but 'Back To December' is really so much better, and probably Taylor Swift's best song by far.

And with that, let's proceed to 2012, and some Honourable Mentions:

album review: 'strange clouds' by b.o.b.

Short version: a promising album with moments of true brilliance, but hampered by unnecessary guest stars, compromised production, studio interference, and B.o.B.'s lack of creative assertion. Overall, a good album, but it could have been a great one.

Today, I'm going to talk briefly about the breakdown of regionalization in rap music. 

Now, as utterly pretentious and completely boring as that might sound, it's actually something that says a lot about the evolution in hip-hop and rap music over the past twenty to twenty-five years. Considering most of you reading this probably weren't alive or old enough to care about this sort of thing, let me make this very explicit: back in the 80s and 90s, it mattered where your hip-hop and rap came from, and each region developed their own distinctive style. 

The first two regions that really grew were the East and West Coast. Driven by developments in New York and L.A., this was where the first real differences in the genre grew up. On the East Coast, lyrical dexterity was prized, with multisyllabic rhyming and complex wordplay. This is the coast that spawned Biggie and Jay-Z and Public Enemy and Nas, politically charged poets that greatly elevated their craft. On the West Coast, we had the explosion of gangsta rap and G-funk, driven by marijuana and great beats, inspiring artists like Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Tupac Shakur. Suffice to say, the highly charged mid-90s were rocked by the feud between both coasts, escalating to a peak with the deaths of Biggie and 2Pac within months of each other. 

But in the mean time, we also had the growth of rap across other sections of the United States. The first big growth was Midwest hip-hop, driven by N.W.A. and the gangster rap explosion, but the broader diversity of the Midwest led to greater experimentation, such as the speed rap pioneered by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and Twista and the horrorcore experiments of Eminem, Insane Clown Posse, and Three 6 Mafia. But I'm not here to talk about Midwest rap, or indeed any of the coastal rap movements.

Nope, today we're going to be discussing Southern rap, which is where the artist I'm reviewing today hails from. It's the youngest of the movements, and it also tends to be one most dismissed by critics (unfairly so, but I'll get to that). Granted, there have been a few critical success stories to emerge from 'the Dirty South', like Ludacris, T.I. and Lil Wayne, but most of the genre tends to get dumped upon for not nearly being as intelligent or interesting as their counterparts. It also doesn't help matters that crunk, the 'purple drank' movement, and Miami bass all came from the region - say what you want about the music of those movements, they weren't particularly lyrically dextrous or all that interesting outside of the initial fad. It also tended to be interesting to see how artists would distance themselves from the Southern scene as they got older. Lil Wayne has never rapped about the 'Dirty South', and while Ludacris and T.I. have always had some vestige of a connection to their roots, their later music had a much more pronounced West Coast vibe. It didn't seem that many rappers really wanted to embrace the southern style and culture with any intelligence or gravitas.

Except for one band: OutKast.