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...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 18, 2015 (VIDEO)

Hmm, that episode turned out bizarrely well. Just going to roll with it, hope it continues, especially after how unbelievably shitty yesterday was.

Next up, my album for my two year anniversary! Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 18, 2015

...ever have those days when everything you expected just goes wrong in spectacular fashion? You'd think that I'd have more of those days, considering that I have this show and attempting to predict the evolving tastes of the American public - or at least what the music industry thinks the American public wants - is an exercise in guesswork at best. But I thought after thirty weeks doing this show, I thought I had a reasonably firm grasp on it - and boy, did this week prove me wrong. And that would have been fine - I generally like surprises - except it went wrong in the worst possible way.

video review: 'make a move' by gavin degraw

Almost forgot this album came out, so I'm glad I caught it. Shame it's not very good, though.

Next up... eh, I'm not sure. We'll see.

album review: 'make a move' by gavin degraw

As some of you know, the end of the year is coming up. It's always an important time for music critics, because we're the ones expected to put together our year-end lists to the general indifference of musicians and audiences alike. And for me, this year I'm making four lists: my top ten albums of the year, my top twenty-five songs, and - in the continuing tradition from my blog - the top ten best and worst hit songs of the year. These last two lists are drawn from the year end Billboard Hot 100 list, and it's also the only time I'll ever make a 'worst of' list, because, let's face it, I don't cover all of the terrible albums that get released (only most of them) and a 'worst of' list only really works with a limited field.

In any case, I've been making my year end best and worst hit songs since 2011, but today I want to look back to 2012, where I first came across 'Not Over You' by Gavin Degraw. And I'll be honest - it was an early frontrunner to make my year end list of the best songs of the year. But it didn't make the list and a year later, I'm kind of happy I didn't put it there. I had gone through a breakup close to this time last year, and 'Not Over You' did speak to me on a very visceral level - but at the same time, I was fairly certain that my integrity was compromised, and I felt certain that once some of my own angst had faded, I wouldn't like the song quite as much. And, surprise surprise, I was right. Don't get me wrong, 'Not Over You' still represents what Gavin Degraw and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder can do at their best, with reasonably punchy songwriting and a lot of bombast that toes the line between sophisticated and raw.  

And yet, I didn't feel I knew Gavin Degraw very well, so I took a deeper look through his decade-deep discography (I know, I was as surprised as you probably are). Overall, he's not bad, but I'm not sure he's the kind of act I would actively seek out in most cases. His songwriting is decent enough for the most part, but I'm not entirely surprised it's taken until recently for him to 'break' in the mainstream, because the strident and occasionally gratingly nasal nature of his voice doesn't always fit his instrumentation, which can sometimes feel a little too 'small' for his vocals. But after the success of 'Not Over You' and his collaboration with Ryan Tedder, it appears that Degraw has recruited all manner of additional producers to pump his new album up with more energy. And while I'd normally say a move in this direction smacks of selling out, it's not intrinsically a bad thing, depending on what direction they go. So I picked up Make A Move (a month late... yeah, I kind of forgot this album was coming out... sorry) and took a look - how did it turn out?