the top ten best hit songs of 2010 (VIDEO)

I'm so damn glad this turned out as well as it did, especially as I had to re-edit to avoid the damn copyright bot. In any case, thank you all for watching and subscribing, I dearly appreciate it!

the top ten best hit songs of 2010

I have to admit, when I first added the highest tier option to include requests for a top ten list, I had no idea what was going to be requested. Opening up the vast decades of Billboard history meant this could go in any direction, and that could mean a wealth of new discoveries. And thus our first Patreon request is for the best hit songs of... 2010.

album review: 'heaven in this hell' by orianthi

Hey guys, how many of you remember the music of 2010?

Well, if you're having a bit of trouble remembering the hits from this year, I'm not surprised. In 2010 we were in the middle of the club music explosion, driven on by the success of Ke$ha, the Black Eyed Peas, and more. This was a year that seemed dedicated to going to the club and partying at the club until the break of dawn, and the Billboard Charts definitely reflected that. 

But here was the problem: the majority of that music sucked.

Yeah, I'm not kidding around about this one. 2010 was an awful year for the Billboard charts, with very few songs that were memorable enough to like and a whole load of crap that was memorable enough to hate. A lot of people blame Ke$ha for 2010 being awful, but I don't, mostly because while she did have several hits that made the year end chart that year, she wasn't responsible for the trend of awful music stretching across multiple acts. There was no excuse for shit like 'Imma Be' or 'Hey Soul Sister' or 'Cooler Than Me' getting big, and Ke$ha had no connection to any of that awful.

But part of the problem was that most of the hit music of 2010 just sounded alike. It embodied club music in every sense of the word - ephemeral, energetic, fun to dance to but completely forgettable come the next morning. And since I went to the club a lot in 2010, I had a chance to hear all of the absolute worst the pop and hip-hop charts had to offer. And even worse was the fact that there was so little good music that charted that year to overtake the club hits, so much so that I had a really hard time making a year end top ten list in 2010. There just wasn't enough there was distinct enough to care about.

So thus I was as surprised as anyone that the number one song on my year end best list was a pop rock song called 'According To You' from some girl named Orianthi, which completely defied by expectations by being pretty damn awesome. It's a song where Orianthi viciously savages the last guy she was with for constantly putting her down, and then bragging about how her new boyfriend actually treats her with respect and affection.   So yeah, it's a pretty basic formula that's cribbed straight from Beyonce's playbook, but Orianthi brings a pretty significant presence to the track, mostly due to the fact she's a pretty great guitarist, to the point where it was probably one of the few songs that charted in 2010 that had a guitar solo. And considering we weren't getting any good Avril Lavigne or Pink in 2010, Orianthi seemed a welcome replacement, so I picked up her album to see if there was more where 'According To You' came from.

There really wasn't. And Orianthi's Believe really isn't a good album. Yes, she is a phenomenal guitarist, and yes, she can bring a lot of personality to her tracks despite some technical weaknesses in her vocal technique, but there was a lot of filler and weak material on that album, and nothing to show Orianthi was much of a good songwriter either. Part of the problem was that Orianthi put out a lot of songs about how happy she was she made it and her 'inspirational' story, and while there's a market for those types of songs, they do have a limited shelf life. Eventually, listeners get tired of hearing the story of how you started from the bottom and then accomplished your dreams and everyone else can too (talking about you here, Drake). And really, I'd be hard-pressed to find a good enough song on that album that could follow 'According To You'. And apparently her label (Geffen) agreed - Orianthi was dropped from the label and now her newest album is courtesy of Robo Records, which has the distinction of being the backing label of Charlie Sheen. Yikes.

But then I had a new thought - there was a solid chance that Orianthi never got the chance to shine as a songwriter because of label interference and rewrites, because Geffen sure as hell didn't know how to promote Orianthi, which is probably the reason she never eked out a second hit. So is Orianthi's follow-up show new songwriting promise, or is she doomed with the label of 'One Hit Wonder'?