1A. Violet Vector And The Lovely Lovelies, "When I Say Can You Dig It (You Say Yeah We Can)"

The long-discussed ideal of the "celestial jukebox"—being able to listen to whatever, whenever, wherever—is still something of a pipe dream, but the "whatever" part of the equation inched ever closer to becoming reality in 2007. As a result, music fandom became pretty atomized; if you asked 100 people in roughly the same demographic to surrender their iPods and show their playlists, the chance of finding two that were exactly alike would be slim to none, and even the notion of finding 80% overlap would be slim. This situation further hastened the "big hits subsidize the flops" structure of the world's major labels, much to the delight of the Digg-enabled hordes; consensus was a thing of the past, the days of the mythical "12-CDs-a-year" buyers moving in lockstep were done.

Which is why it was funny to me that so many people pegged LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" as a top-two contender for our year-end list. Putting aside the fact that we'd already hinted at its absence from our countdown, I have to wonder about what people are expecting as far as the criteria for year-end lists goes. I know that we're all "professional" critics here, but the creeping consensus that I've seen on so many year-end lists made me feel like the scientific calculation of "good" (suitable sonic references + 30something nostalgia + generational-hero protagonist = x?) is sort of displacing the more ephemeral rush that one can get from hearing a terrific song, a feeling that isn't unlike being in love, or at least having a semi-ridiculous, yet completely fun crush. I don't know if I'm a sap or a sentimentalist or what, but I'd rather see a list filled with a thousand infatuations than yet another list that dutifully mentions Radiohead solely because they ganked Stars' early-digital-release trick in a way that got them a lot of press.

All of this is a long way of saying that my No. 1 song of the year is Violet Vector and the Lovely Lovelies' "When I Say Can You Dig It (You Say Year We Can")," a twee-psych freakout from a North Carolina indiepop outfit that doesn't even have a proper CD out yet. (Black Kids alert!) In a way, I feel incredibly awkward about this—am I being willfully contrarian? flaunting my "I listen to more music than you" plumage? putting off that first paying-attention-to-it spin of In Rainbows for a little too long?—but the numbers would have it no other way. What started as a download from some music blog first became a persistent earworm, then turned into a reason for me to commandeer my friends' computers and force them to visit the band's MySpace page to hear the track, and finally became the song that most defined my sorta-absurd, not-as-fun-as-this-song-might-indicate year, especially if you take into account a) its firm grip on my iTunes' Most Played list; and b) the fact that it greeted visitors to my MySpace page for many, many weeks—the post-high school equivalent of wearing a band T-shirt on yearbook-photo day. The track itself is a hazy backyard tea party populated by people flinging around freshly picked flowers out of sheer joy, opening with the "Be My Baby" drums employed by our No. 28 song but veering off into an entirely different direction immediately afterward. It's got a girly-girl singer and a loping beat and judiciously employed cowbells and a chorus of ebuillent voices shouting "yeah!" as if that syllable is the most wonderful one in the world's entire lexicon and a breakdown that sounds like fireworks. Yes, fireworks. Maybe that was a side effect of the whole "falling-in-love-with-it" thing, but I swear to God I saw them on first listen, and I still do on the hundredth. (Maura Johnston)

Violet Vector And The Lovely Lovelies [MySpace]

1B. Grinderman, "No Pussy Blues"

For many, Nick Cave's persona is long fixed as the Birthday Party's most malevolent manchild, hunched over a microphone with forked tongue dangling over the lip of a London stage, a gaunt brat getting biblical on trashy rock and pulp horror novels, as much of a turn-on as he was revolting. And as Cave blossomed into a songwriter interested in more than just hilarious grotesqueries, into a lyricist as capable of writing as affectingly about human love as he was the love of a man for winged vermin, he's been forced to periodically reaffirm that the quasi-domesticated piano man can still bend to his baser impulses while backed by plug ugly riffs. Reaffirm it, one suspects, as much for himself as for the faithful.

So of course those who haven't closely followed his 20-plus years with his hetero life partners the Bad Seeds have missed his songwriting develop an emotional range, a sometimes startling humanism, that wasn't even on the radar of the purposefully callow Cave of Junkyard. They've also missed out on his initial Birthday Party persona taking on an apocalyptic grown and sexy tone that one can only pull off with a certain number of birthday cards in the rubbish bin, an onstage glowering equal parts hellish carnival barker and pervy Pentecostal preacher pounding something other than the pulpit. A hell of lot of people think he's sexier now than ever at 50, even if he looks more like a saloonkeep gone round the bend than the rakish Seedling of yore. That maleficent maturity is a big part of why.

But as with most long-term relationships, fan familiarity can breed dangerous contempt for a career, and many people probably think they've probably got a new Bad Seeds record pegged before it hits iTunes, pre-rejecting it because they're expecting more bathos than eros, more ballads than bloodletting. Their loss, but Cave's too, and one possible reason out of many as to why he took a brief Seeds break to bash out a scuzzy, sleazy set of garish comic blues this year with a garage band of cognac drinking buddies called Grinderman. Call it a way of doing something he's always done, but letting a new trademark lure lapsed fans into his parlor only to shank them with the six-inch gold blade they thought he pawned long ago.

So "No Pussy Blues," a tale of spurned romance, 'case you misread the title, that's Cave's best tune in years, is ragged and noisy and decidedly un-genteel, driven by a Jim Sclavunos cymbal fill as twitchy as a piss shiver, a fuzz bassline from Martyn P. Casey that swings like a knuckle-dragging a daft bulldog punk in a '40s cartoon, Warren Ellis' already infamous electric bouzouki, and Cave's dangerous student driver guitar, both of which come in noisy spurts like a horned-up Tex Avery tongue flinging saliva at any be-boobed honey in sight. You can't dance to "No Pussy Blues" and naturally you sure can't fuck to it—it's too rhythmically stiff, though its repetitive jerks and pre-climaxes do imitate another, slightly less satisfying kind of sex—but all the lowbrow blue-balled frustration that's forced zillions to take up crude musical arms against those who would deny them the booty is alive and well here.

Except most of those "gentlemen" were more than half Cave's age, meaning they were half as mordant, teenagers lacking in delicious literary-minded self-consciousness (and plain ol' self-consciousness). Cave's droll narrative rises in hysterical pitch as he details his attempts to bed a lass presumably young enough to be his granddaughter—pace the intro, where Humbert here finds himself suddenly shy about his wrinkles and age spots as he's interrogated by a collegiate audience's eyes—with enough absurd kitchen-sink details that the song becomes something like a parallel universe Penthouse Forum letter, where instead of a fantasy object (literally) rolling over for the protagonist's convoluted whims, he's rebuffed no matter what sensitive-guy hoops he jumps through. A door-opener and a compliment-payer at first, he tries traditional courting only to run smack into her chastity, and even as he turns on the sugar and showers her with baubles and dogsits her awful yappy mutt, she "still just didn't want to." Shifting up his game, he goes all asshole out, drinks enough to blind a streak of tigers, bends her arm as well as her virgin ears, and still she's batting her eyes with an "oh, you." Finally he shrugs off his locked-legs lot and takes his jollies in letting his band whip up gnarly, cathartic feedback that would leave many a young neo no-waver blushing, as he stomps his heels and rolls his eyes and lets out a Little Richard "woo!" cuz he can.

When Maura mentioned a few entries back that Fall Out Boy's guitars "didn't sound like they'd been forcibly neutered," presumably unlike so much other 2007 music, I had to giggle because it's easy to imagine their axes and genitals alike shriveling up if they found themselves in the same room as Nick Cave and his song about forced impotence that manages to show up the (symbollic, natch) phalluses just about all of the year's cocky young rock knuckleheads. A guaranteed emo antidote whether you choose to ignore its decidedly non-neutered guitars bouzoukis or not, "No Pussy Blues" even makes self-loathing, abused by the less capable into near-irrelevance, funny again—the song itself is one masterful gag at Cave's expense after another, Vaudeville pratfalls that keep landing him smack on his face while in pursuit of the punanny on the pedestal—the singer painting himself (in giant cartoon strokes) as the grostesque party in this stalled transaction. It's all inwardly directed venom, a self-flagellate alone in this world with his six-inch burden, and the polar opposite of the other song I (very) briefly considered for this slot.

LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends," undoubtedly a great record, has found its way to the top of many year-end best-of lists thanks to (among other sentiments) its generally uplifting affirmation that you still might be able to find solace for the sucky parts of your life in platonic companionship well after those intense friendships of your teenage years. And who wouldn't find it easier to be seduced by a song with a smidge of hope for relationships getting richer with age? James Murphy's occasional notes of thirtysomething anxiousness about isolation are pure Hallmark compared to Cave and his song that seems to say friends don't mean shit when you're twenty years on from that and still scrounging desperately for one more lay, no better off than you were when you were 15, just as fixated on ass, and probably more likely to get it. So what's left to do but crack wise with a wink and all wit your tired ol' butt can muster after yet another flub and set it to the grimiest groove of the last 12 months? "No Pussy Blues" ain't earnest and it's pretty ugly, but if you value ribaldry and release more than most things, this is your tune.

And though we'll all hopefully find that special someone before we're Cave's age—the wedding band on his finger makes "No Pussy Blues" playacting anyway—and as much as we'll all be wistful over displaced acquaintances tonight as one year gives way to the next, chances are a lot of folks out there will also be silently griping over all the dishes done in rubber gloves and gifts of flowers and snow white doves that never resulted in a roll in hay in 2007, while possibly angling for one last caress (and possibly failing). "No Pussy Blues" affirms that, while this squishy interpersonal coupling shit gets no less ridiculous as we age, at least that ridiculousness can provide ever-richer fodder for hilarious rock'n'roll. We're not alone in our unfulfilled animal needs, but those of us who aren't Nick Cave can only hope to bring such loud LOLz about our inability to get our rocks off when we're pushing retirement age. (Jess Harvell)

Grinderman [MySpace]

Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

The Jonas Brothers - "Still In Love With You"

Unlike America's angrier teenage girls, I find it impossible to hate on these curly-headed, social-networking-feud instigators, especially since underneath the bazillion dollar digi-production (see if you can spot the organ bobbing on the waves of compressed guitar) all their non-ballads are just old-fashioned bubble-punk with the sneer swtiched off. (Jess)

Jonas Brothers - "Still In Love With You" [YouTube]
Jonas Brothers [MySpace]

Paramore - "Misery Business"

The best pop-punk track of the year: three cheers for sweet revenge, big "whoooas" that dared you to not sing along with them, and a spitfire frontwoman who took to her Livejournal to disclaim the use of the Lord's name in the song's sing-along-'til-the-rapture chorus. (Maura)

Paramore - "Misery Business" [YouTube]
Paramore [MySpace]

Gui Boratto - "Beautiful Life"

Cheesy, life-affirming trance hidden away in the sleeve of a minimal techno 12-inch, with the bonus of stupidly heart-melting New Order bass twang and the biggest staggered climaxes of the year. (Jess)

Gui Boratto - "Beautiful Life" [YouTube]
Gui Boratto [MySpace]

Robyn - "This One's For You (Remix)"

The year's one truly new(ish) song from the reinvented Swedish kook was the dark underbelly of "Irreplaceable," three minutes and change of post-dumping freakouts over a breezy acoustic guitar stolen from Ne-Yo's arsenal. (Maura)

Robyn [MySpace]

Double Dagger - "Luxury Condos For The Poor

Moving from Double Dagger's native Baltimore back to my own native Philly only underscored the sad universality of this lugubrious post-hardcore lament over city governments refusing to rectify institutional poverty in favor of pandering to developers building "waterfront gravesights, 30 stories high." "If you've lived here your whole life, it's time to get out," but to where? (Jess)

Double Dagger - "Luxury Condos For The Poor (Live At Whartscape)" [Look closely for my big bald head somewhere in the background.]
Double Dagger [MySpace]

My Teenage Stride - "To Live And Die In The Airport Lounge"

Fresh Orange Juice served up in a Brooklyn cafe, with a side order of world-traveler ennui. Plus the video has zombies. Zombies! (Maura)

My Teenage Stride - "To Live And Die In The Airport Lounge" [MySpace]
My Teenage Stride [MySpace]

Shackleton - "Blood On My Hands (Ricardo Villalobos Apocalypso Now Mix)"

A crackling deep house rhythm track and the low-end of dubstep wring their hands somewhere between England and Berlin for the spirits of the 21st-century's political bystanders, a track only about right for gloomy bus rides out of the more blighted parts of your neighborhood. (Jess)

Skull Disco [Official Site]

Blood Red Shoes - "It's Getting Boring By The Sea"

Bitching about a dead-end town, transformed into something constructive by guitars that sound like they've been pulverized. (Maura)

Blood Red Shoes - "It's Getting Boring By The Sea" [YouTube]
Blood Red Shoes [MySpace]

Dirty Projectors - "Rise Above"

Davey Longstreth's musical revamp of Black Flag's Damaged was warmer but no less forbidding (and impressive) in places than any of the year's neo-proggery, but the words of hardcore's most supposedly nihilistic (the element of Longstreth's experiment so often glossed over by reviewers) provided an unexpected humanizing element when stripped and repurposed, a cracked, life-affirming jolt in a bleak year. (Jess)

Dirty Projectors - "Rise Above" [YouTube]
Dirty Projectors [MySpace]

Britney Spears - "Heaven On Earth"

Is the year's most photographed woman even singing on this track? Does it even matter? It's a grand, swooping song that's made for the last dance of the night, an ode to Mr. Right Now that dresses up her tawdry hooking-up-with-paps expoits enough to make them seem almost purposeful. (Maura)

Britney Spears - "Heaven On Earth" [YouTube]
Britney Spears [MySpace]

Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

40. Ne-Yo, "Addicted"
39. Melt Banana, "Blank Page Of The Blind"
38. Spoon, "The Underdog"
37. Lloyd, "Get It Shawty"
36. Sugababes, "About You Now"
35. Big Business, "Just As The Day Was Dawning"
34. Kylie Minogue, "2 Hearts"
33. Eve, "Tambourine"
32. Tiffany Evans, "Girl Gone Wild"
31. Kanye West, "Flashing Lights"
30. YACHT, "See A Penny (Pick It Up)"
29. Marnie Stern, "Every Single Line Means Something"
28. Bat For Lashes, "What's A Girl To Do?"
27. Charlotte Hatherley, "Very Young"
26. Tegan and Sara, "Back In Your Head"
25. T.I., "You Know What It Is"
24. Carrie Underwood, "Before He Cheats"
23. LCD Soundsystem, "Us V. Them"
22. Amerie, "Gotta Work"
21. Swizz Beatz, "It's Me Bitches"
20. Rihanna, "Umbrella"
19. Battles, "Atlas"
18. Tracey Thorn, "Raise The Roof"
17. Lil Wayne, "I Feel Like Dying"
16. Nelly Furtado, "Say It Right"
15. T-Pain, "Calm The Fuck Down"
14. M.I.A., "Paper Planes"
13. Bobby Valentino, "Anonymous"
12. Wye Oak, "Warning"
11. Rihanna and Ne-Yo, "Hate That I Love You"
10. Lloyd, "You"
09. Lil Mama, "Lip Gloss"
08. Sissy Wish, "Float"
07. Rich Boy feat. Polow Da Don, "Throw Some D's"
06. Siobhan Donaghy, "Don't Give It Up"
05. UGK featuring OutKast, "International Players' Anthem"
04. Fall Out Boy, ""The Take Over, The Break's Over""
03. R. Kelly featuring T.I. and T-Pain - "I'm A Flirt (Remix)"

No. 2 and No. 1 are coming Monday, but feel free to speculate about what might take those top slots in comments!

An unflashy example of years of studio time paying off with yet one more effortless take on a known R&B quantity's house style, "I'm A Flirt" is one of those songs that I never would have pegged as a high-placer on a year-end list until I noticed I was getting the same springtime serotonin bump on the hundredth play as on the first, the bouncebouncebounceworthiest track he's released since, well, "Ignition (Remix)." Now we're not the only ones to notice that in a year when many people felt R. had exhausted the batshittery—and this is before the second wave of Trapped In The Closet chapters dropped (we'll give "R. Belly" a pass)—the best single off the mostly embarassing-not-cute Double Up (a helpful Cliffs Notes for what Rich Juzwiak dubs the album's endless "metaphor killers" in that linked essay: R. is now a horny diamond-encrusted dinosaur bitching someone out on the two-way in 3-D stunna shades while shooting sour sex skittles out of his robo-urethra on Neptune... or something) keeps the come-ons to the kind people other than R. will be able to parse (hey there's a girl over there and he's gonna wink at her!) and the handclap-and-descending-bass-bump programming nicely subtle. The closest the song has to a hook other than the g-funky synth scribble is that upper-register piano plink-plink-clunk, played like a jump rope swinging 'round on the beat, and while T.I. steps over it with his arms-folded and a T-Pain en español kicks up his heels as he grins in mid-air, it's R.'s first and final verses that pull out all the crazy double-time double-dutch stops, nimble in a way that the guy who could have prolapsed himself in the "Bump And Grind" days never coulda dared and landing without even needing to dab its brow at No. 3.

R. Kelly feat. T.I. and T-Pain - "I'm A Flirt (Remix)" [YouTube]
R. Kelly [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

So when Idolator started I was pretty lukewarm-to-bitchy about Fall Out Boy, but over the course of this year, thanks in part to the ravings of ex-Idolator boss Brian Raftery and the whole shared adoration for the Josie & The Pussycats soundtrack thing—not to mention the fact that in the year that Indie Rock Broke it was kinda nice to hear songs with guitars that didn't sound like they'd been forcibly neutered before they were committed to tape—I relented. Especially after hearing the ferociously epic pop song "The Take Over, The Break's Over." You've got the pogo-stick guitar and ratatat drumming that usher in the proceedings, the chorus that is never going to not make me think of Pebbles' "Girlfriend" in an abstract way^*, the swooping hoisted-fist-worthy dual-axe action at the end, and the line about conjugal visits. It's audaciously all over the place in a "let's see if this will stick" sort of way, but (probably for that reason) it went pretty much nowhere as a single, garnering a fraction of the spins that even the old (and way inferior!) "Sugar, We're Goin' Down" did over the course of this past year and being pretty much a hit only in the alternate musical universe that is TRL. (Dear bands out there: This is a(nother!) sign that I should never, ever pick your singles. So don't ask, because it'll just be too painful for all of us.)

Fall Out Boy - The Take Over The Breaks Over [MySpace]
Fall Out Boy [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness
[Photo: Getty]

^* Yeah, I have no idea. Maybe it's a lasting effect of sleeping through my clock radio a lot back in the late '80s.

Frankly, I'm tempted to just post a bunch of animated arrows pointing to the clip above and leave the writeup at "WATCH THAT!!" But though the "International Players Anthem" video was so best that it even managed a couple plays on cable TV, this miniature domestic dramedy is a straight-up bonus, part of a full audio-video package in an era when "MTV doesn't even play videos anymore!" barely rates as a punchline, as well as a reprieve from the p-poppin' parade of pole-dancers set to the iTunes hot ringtone chart. As for the soundtrack that outshines the film? True, you can't (and shouldn't) ignore the thrifty Three 6 Mafia re-recycled backing track; my sister echoed many this year when she said could barely hear past the luminiosity of that Willie Hutch sample to the four gents talking over (underneath?) it. But there's also meter-flaunting Andre 3000 playing (with) the rhythmic angles—"lit-tra-chure" and "chi-ro-prac-tick" being points where he's just showin off how far he can stray for the hell of it, infurating some and charming others—over a beat-less intro that's barely a net, the boldest and funniest in his recent breadcrumb trail of guest verses, where "not a pimp" Dre still sheds a sly tear over all those moistened drawers of the past during the year's sweetest pledge of fidelity to not only lovers and friends but extended family and the partner that we all suspected had strained under so much sideways break-up gossip. Outkast veneration aside, let us not forget that first-billing does truly belongs to two of the best to ever have their cell phone bills sent to addresses below the Mason-Dixon, with the final stretch of Bun B's verse the year's best "just try and follow along with the bouncing ball" moment. And when Andre suddenly cedes the spotlight to the rhythm track, it's no R.I.P. revisionism to say that Pimp C's chest-out entrance would distract from any drums. His like-it-rough-and-preferrably-strings-free definition of romance may not square with yours—personally, I lean closer to Andre's kilts and corny email gags—but he sure as hell sells it, another part that you can't imagine the hip-hop whole of the year working as well without.

UGK feat. Outkast - "International Players Anthem" [YouTube]
UGK [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Siobhan Donaghy's Ghosts was my favorite album of the year, glossy Europop songs created by someone who apparently had only listened to Kate Bush and Slowdive records in the months leading up to entering the recording studio: lush production, details that blossomed in headphones, and enough overall artistic moxie that Donaghy could have maybe finally shed the "ex-Sugababe" tag. Maybe, if her label hadn't dropped the ball when the long-delayed album finally came out.

OK, the album's flop (it peaked at No. 92 on the UK chart) was in large part the result of the market for hypersmart pop that people are willing to pay cash money for drying up all around the world, even in those markets that aren't behemoths of dumb like These United States. And really, pretty much any song on Ghosts could have taken this spot, but I chose "Don't Give It Up," the album's opener, because of the way it sublimates its jangling nerves under a choir of Siobhans on the chorus, their voices swooping up into the highest registers as they reassure the listener that everyone's taken a knock or two. (Not to mention that since it leaked before the rest of Ghosts, it topped my iTunes play count of songs from the album.) But since I love Ghosts top to bottom and I could talk about it for days, here's the vaguely Inland Empire-inspired video for the stunning monologue-to-an-ex "So You Say," which has what Matthew Perpetua described as a "Wilson Phillips-as-a-shoegazer-band chorus":

Siobhan Donaghy - Don't Give It Up [YouTube]
Siobhan Donaghy - So You Say [YouTube]
Siobhan Donaghy [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

For all the blog jawing and Fader-profiling and whatnot earlier in the year about producer Polow Da Don being the second coming of your world-changing boardsman of choice (and a commercial menace to boot), his bottom-line-minding taste in collaborators and his variable strike rate do give me pause, despite Don-produced '07 highlights like the thuggish ruggish oompah of Young Buck's "Get Buck." (Plus my unabashed love for "London Bridge," which exhibits all Polow's worst traits, from the person on the mic to recycling whatever trends are lying around the charts, and still trumps.) But we'll always have Polow making it rain bleep and bass on "Throw Some D's," if not the best beat of the year^* then certainly Top 5, his (and co-producer Butta's) glass-shattering deep soul stabs two-stepping with low-riding techno synths, with Polow the rapper out-nimbling (and out-LOL'ing) his benefactor on his own dime. Hence why I'm not counting him out just yet.

Rich Boy feat. Polow Da Don - "Throw Some D's" [YouTube]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

^* Before someone pops up going "hey, this was released fourth quarter of '06!": In my partial defense, I claim the usual the "it blew up biggest in '07" year-end list caveat. (Hey, Rolling Stone got away with it. Way down at No. 37!) And for those salty over my release-date flaunting or who think that Rich Boy is mumbling through a first-draft here, feel free to substitute Lil Wayne's Drought 3 freestyle over the track, which contains the most awe-inspiring admission of celebrity laziness in the face of fornication I've ever heard: "I just feed 'em drugs and watch 'em fuck each other." Later to recycle his observations into freestyle over a yet-to-be-released High School Musical 3 instrumental, presumably.

In keeping with my 2007 tradition of "loving music that could most accurately be described as 'pop' if only it'd actually get played on American radio," I spun Sissy Wish's "Float" approximately 8,493 times^* this year, thanks to its note-perfect fusion of "don't let the world get you down" sentiment and ridiculous, rom-com-montage-ready catchiness. That's not to say it doesn't get a little bit wild here and there; the manic "na na na"s dropped into some of the verses, the key change, and the voices-coming-at-you-from-all-sides bridge are all signs that this this track may be one of the best aural depictions of a Major Life Turning Point committed to tape. Yet throughout, the song's lyrical insistence that you can, in fact, make it if you try—coupled with its singsong melody—signals that all will be right, or at least worth humming along with, as soon as you pick yourself up and dust your troubles off from wherever they might have landed on your person.

Sissy Wish - Float [YouTube]
Sissy Wish [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

^* OK, slight exaggeration. But it did get the "frequent iTunes repeat" treatment a lot.

With days until Dick Clark's rockin' bells, Lil Mama finishes out the year one more semi-success who spun MySpace audio player ubiquity and blanket "omg awesome!" comment-box testimonials from just about anyone who wasn't anti-bubblegum by nature (a.k.a. a bad person) into the Top 10, and then... well, not much. Good clippings and an appearance in the Hot 100's upper echelon is a comfortable enough finish to the year for some crit-fed Canucks or even a no-hope singing contest also-ran. But when you're an obvious kid-world star languishing in Billboard's wings; when your cutesy (a flow fierce enough to flash rougher rap roots but still Disney safe; the wikky-wikky "what'cha" hook; the ecstatic pivots and hiccups in the maybe-you-like-lip-gloss-a-little-too-much bridge; the high-school setting and cosmetological life-lessons) but club-hardened (the beat as blank as it is loud) sound was why crits have yet to retire the much-abused "crossover"; when even your self-styled look was bang up to 2007's neon-popping... well, it's got to make you want to send irritated texts to your spooked label for dropping the socially networked ball. Still, while I am bummed over Mama's unintentional inability to keep the momentum of "Lip Gloss" going (and keeping hope alive for '08), this remains the year's gold (or your favorite metallic shade) standard for teen sass set to big ol' booms, maybe only as deep as a single coat of watermelon-flavored extra-shine, but twice as tasty.

Lil Mama - "Lip Gloss" [KoVideo]
Lil Mama [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Lloyd's "You" was cad-pop taken to a new level, a song where he paid tribute to the woman he was looking to bed while also letting her know that there were other ladies—in his line of sight, even!—who were also tickling his fancy. It's a sweeping song that sounds like it's more tailor-made for a rainy day of post-one-night-stand rutting than said possibly regrettable hookup, warping the chorus of Spandau Ballet's "True" just enough to make that song's pledges of fidelity turn into an oily devotional to Ms. Right Now (and Ms. Maybe Later If I'm Still Feeling Frisky). But while Lil Wayne's charged with letting anyone else listening in know the real reasons for Lloyd's interest—dropping sex-on-Mars verses and what may be the best way to thank someone for giving head ever, "You give good brain like you graduated from a good school"—the shimmering strings and Lloyd's insistence that he "just wants to chill" could probably, nine times out of 10, work at charming the thongs off our hero's intended targets.

Lloyd - "You" [YouTube]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Note: Wikipedia is claiming that Lloyd was a contestant on Double Dare 2000 back in the day, but I won't believe it until I see the YouTube. Anyone?

"Hate That I Love You" popped up like a tender mercy or urban radio this year, sandwiched between skeezy/silly-ass/sad sensitivity like "Soulja Girl" and "Shawty Is A Ten," but I also found myself daydreaming about a chart-hungry emo band or a conservative Nashville act playing the song straight for a hit of their own, their producers not even needing to musically fiddle with the master tapes. That programming malleability may not fly with the snobs, and to be honest, the Sugarland clusterfuck cover of Beyonce's similarly strummy genre-trasher "Irreplaceable" on this year's American Music Awards and pop emo's general pass-agg ickiness probably prove that the divas should be the ones who stick to sticking it to scrubs/admitting to clinginess. Still, forget figuring out what to tag the backing, because what makes "Hate" great is far less difficult to nail down, i.e. it gets cars (or bars) full of heads swaying as they pretend to be the biggest P.Y.T.'s in contemporary pop serenading each other. (Killer karakoke tune as well, though you need to have a pretty... interesting relationship with your duet partner.) This became a late '07 sing-along anthem for me after a few heartbreak knocks and spending most of the year as an infamous "Umbrella" agnostic, and the sad way I still melt at that telegraphed high note after the breakdown makes me wonder if "mid-tempo R&B with the kind of cheddary acoustic guitars I'd never put up with in a rock tune" is a musical soft spot I just never knew about until 2006.

Rihanna feat. Ne-Yo - "Hate That I Love You" [YouTube]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

The Baltimore duo Wye Oak—formerly known as Monarch—was one of my favorite new bands this year, with a two-person lineup that made the layers upon layers of feedback and melody they unleashed on their debut album, If Children, all the more remarkable. When Wye Oak played our anniversary party last fall, the No. 1 question people asked me about them was "Are there really only two people on stage?"; the wall of sound they erected during their set was fortresslike, yet laced with hooks that forced you to focus on individual songs, instead of just the massive amount of noise they were producing. "Warning" is the first song I heard from the band and remains probably the best example of how they channel their indiepop through otherworldly wails; its beauty shines from the first guitar peal, and when Jenn Wasner accompanies the overdriven guitar with some crystal-clear "na na na"s it's hard for me to resist the impulse to skip in time to the music, even if I'm sitting down. (No studio-quality YouTube of the track, alas, although there is an MP3 of the song at the band's site, which is linked below.)

Monarch >> MUSIC [monarchmakesmusic.com]
Monarch @ the Cake Shop [YouTube]
Wye Oak [MySpace]
[Photo: Nikola Tamindzic]

"Anonymous" was the best of Timbaland's trance-rap or hip-house or techno-R&B or some-electronic-music-and-some-urban-music hybrids this year, and it also proved to be the least heralded, leapfrogged by late-breaking singles from Timberlake and Furtado and the songs released under Tim's own trademark. Why? Well, the song's throwback beat (two jarring kicks, a fuzzy snap/clap/snare, and a junk drawer full of polyrhythms rattling and beatboxing on top) is closer to the tricky-toed Tim of a decade ago, and maybe the bleepy filigree of the track's buried keyboard hooks (whose hands were really on the knobs here?) was always going to get steamrolled by his new money-making embrace of grimy waveforms and brutalist pop beats, a fey, spacey song lost in the shadow of the arena-pleasing hugeness of "The Way I Are." But really? I have no idea why our No. 13 stalled at Billboard's No. 49. Label cock-up? General cosmic injustice? Bobby Valentino atoning for the sins of a previous pop life? While I'm sure other Tim hits made more sense this year when your body was upright and moving, there were few earbud moments-in-love more tingly in 2007 than the almost minute-long outro to the album version of "Anonymous."

Bobby Valentino - "Anonymous" [YouTube]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Lost in a lot of the discussion surrounding M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" (the redacted-by-the-man gunshots! the semantics of sampling the Clash! the Beastie Boys bestowing their blessing on her by cameoing in the video!) is the fact that purely as a song it's inordinately catchy, with its hazy, steaming-up-from-blazing-pavement beat and its demanding children's choir that just wants and wants some more. M.I.A.'s Technicoloriot Grrrl persona, of course, only serves to invite her audience to peer deep into her songs—even though there may be more surface to them than meets the eye—but if you can strip away the baggage of blog entries and debates over the "agency" of her music and the tendency of (cough cough mostly male) rock writers trying to get cutesy by referring to M.I.A. as "Ms. Arulpragasam"^* and all the other bullshit that's part and parcel of "being a working musician who pushes a lot of peanut-gallery buttons" in 2007, the song still stands; that's probably why "Plane" works as well as it does. It's not easy listening by any stretch, but it brings together the sorta-subversive and the sorta-sublime in a way that maybe hasn't been glimpsed since that Bikini Kill EP with the song about winning a Motley Crue mirror at the carnival.

M.I.A. PAPER PLANES official video [YouTube]
M.I.A. [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

^* Seriously, why do people do that? Is it a spelling-bee impulse? Some weird stew of many different "ism"s? Is there any other musician out there who's been referred to as "Mr./Ms. [last name]" by outlets that aren't the New York Times as often in 2007?

Despite a similar propensity for unworkable relationships with people who work in "nightclubs," I too once loathed T-Pain. As the year of Poopdeck Pain ground on, though, the guy kept showing up on so many of my favorite singles—the tipping point was probably hearing the sinister, strangulated multi-tracking employed on the remix of Huey's "Pop, Lock, And Drop" during a late night drive and being honestly unnerved by the macabre things one man can do with Antares software; that, and the Showbiz Pizza Palace re-remix—that eventually I cried (Auto-Tuned) uncle. "Calm The Fuck Down," where Pain tries a little tenderness towards a lady friend who's tossing crockery at him, was the first time I really loved our multi-talent auteur as a non-guest star, from the sweetly strummed "acoustic" (like anything this guy does isn't caked in digital glaze) guitar winding through the goofy (and yeah, quasi-misogynistic) pleas/threats, to the climatic, almost shocking ululations, which sound like he's trying force a gallstone the wrong way through his urinary tract, up his throat, and right down a talkbox tube. Even if you remain firm in your T-Pain hating and are unable to enjoy this song as a catchy plaint that's honest about its self-mocking slow jam humor, I do recommend at least sitting through the whole thing for the cherry at the very end.

T-Pain - "Calm The Fuck Down" [YouTube]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Here's the thing about Nelly Furtado's voice: It isn't that good. At its worst, it bends in all the wrong places, and the fronting-at-the-club attitude she showed on songs like "Promiscuous" only makes its whininess stand out more. But sometimes, its limitations can be used to grand effect, and they were put to marvelous use on "Say It Right," a song that recalled the best moments of freestyle's heyday with its chilly beat, lonely lyrics, and the fact that, well, Furtado's pipes don't exactly match those of your everyday divas. (Come to think of it, her limitations actually recall those of Alisha, but that's another talk for another time.) In fact, the somewhat bleak "Say It Right" works so well because, like so many freestyle tracks, it brings the emotion of the singer to the fore while effectively turning the singer herself into a blank canvas, one that any person feeling the same sort of longing expressed by the lyrics could project themself on to. (And when the person you're erasing is as genuinely irritating as Nelly Furtado, that erasure is kind of a bonus.)

Nelly Furtado Say It Right [YouTube]
Nelly Furtado [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Not quite sure where we're at in terms of the Lil Wayne hype-to-hate-and-back-again cycle at the moment, and you know, who cares? But hey, if we're going to celebrate a guy who's (contentiously) made "druggy"/"outre" references his reason for rapping, we might as well nominate the droopy weirdness of "I Feel Like Dying" as his best mixtape moment of the year, where Weezy rolls up the crowd-pleasing pop cultural allusions and smokes them in favor of doing the backstroke in a "sea of codeine" and crushing pretenders to the throne under his neon cleats on a "marajuana field," a woozy, extended pharmacological mash note/riff on the joys of a well-stocked medicine cabinet. You may balk at the "best rapper alive" boasts; I don't quite buy the line that Da Drought 3 is the best thing to happen to metaphor in the 21st-century so far; and Wayne's reach will have to be reassessed if and when Tha Carter 3 ever drops. But I can't deny his prolix efforts at self-canonization made me happier than any other rapper this year. (Also: there's something so right about this fan-made video having Wayne's voice coming out of the mouth of Gollum from Lord Of The Rings.)

Lil Wayne - "I Feel Like Dying" <[YouTube]
Lil Wayne [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Tracey Thorn's second solo album, Out Of The Woods, is a pretty arresting collection of mature electropop, and it may have been one of the most unjustly overlooked albums of 2007. It's frontloaded with some terrific dance tracks—the muted freestyle of "It's All True," a reverent reinterpretation of Arthur Russell's "Get Around To It"—but the album-closing "Raise The Roof," in which Thorn rues the parts of her life that she's spent sitting on the sidelines over a stop-start beat that methodically marks the time she's lost, is absolutely stunning. Thorn's alto alternately pushes someone to take chances and laments her squandered days, and the brittle keyboards that blow in occasionally only heighten the tension. "Roof" doesn't have the motivate-you-through-volume of, say, Amerie's "Gotta Work," but its gentle push from someone who has—and hasn't—seized the day in the past is just as galvanizing.

Also, the video may be my favorite clip of the year, with its simple plot of two incredibly shy people (a man in a rumpled suit, a woman in a (hopeful?) pair of jeweled red slippers) finally finding each other across a dance floor, and tentatively bopping across the long expanse of wood until they reach the other's personal space. No, they don't kiss. But taking the first step toward that is just as important, right?

Tracey Thorn - Raise The Roof [YouTube]
Tracey Thorn [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

The origin story of "Atlas," as recycled by journalists (like me!) throughout the year, goes something like: Battles drummer John Stainer claims inspiration from hearing German DJs boot a new hole up house music's 4/4 with the schaffel/shuffle records of pioneering producers like der bruders Voigt; fans not already down with the turn-of-the-millennium Euro techno program simply source Stainer's boom-bap in the bleacher-rumbling glam rock bop of the early '70s; everyone wins, minus a few blogging wags who invoke Marilyn Manson with slightly less approval. For me and just about anyone who caught Battles in person this year, the body-moving (as opposed to baffling) "Atlas" really came alive onstage, seducing even those who worried that the new Battles would no longer be bringing the math-rock pain. The second time I saw the band in 2007, a gleeful audience danced from Stainer's first bass drum whomp, a feat that no doubt flipped the wigs of anyone who once grimaced along with "In The Meantime" or maniacally drummed their desktops to What Burns Never Returns.

Battles - "Atlas" [YouTube]
Battles [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

I loved "Umbrella" from pretty much the first time I heard it on my MacBook's tinny speakers, the way its minor-key bluster and I'll-stand-by-you lyrics were propped up by some deeply buried synths that sounded like they'd been coated in mud that had been collecting for weeks. Little did I know then that "Umbrella" would become a pop cultural juggernaut, with the "ella, ella, ella, ay, ay, ay"; the seemingly lazy Jay-Z intro that proved itself to be crucial (the Jay-free AC mix of the song sounded unfinished, naked even); the not-half-bad but superfluous Chris Brown remix; and the weird parallels that my brain drew between the track and "Rock Me Amadeus." (No, really.) But even though it's been hated on by some, and even though 2007 was a year that was chiefly marked by my patience being worn thin by everyone—blog bands, bloggers, bands with bloggers in them, OneRepublic, Timbaland, Nicole Scherzinger's endless attempts to come out with a "first single" from her perpetually delayed album—"Umbrella" was my always-one-dial-flip-away security blanket, a song that I could rely on whether I was spending my days staring into a monitor or staring out a car window. The one irony of it being so omnipresent is that I'd probably have placed it higher on my personal end-of-year list if it'd, say, stalled out at No. 20 on the pop charts and faded from the radio around mid-July. But I guess that also ties into a larger thread about music in 2007, and how the fact that it was within arm's reach—not to mention free!—at all times led to it being slightly devalued. So maybe the fact that it's No. 20 on our list does mean that it's song of the year, although I suspect that my saying so will inspire howls of protest from my cohort. [No doubt. — Sen. Ed.]

Rihanna - Umbrella [YouTube]
Rihanna [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

On his own excellent Best Of 2007 list, Idolator contributor Al Shipley had the following to say about Swizz's zonked out "It's Me Bitches/Snitches": "If radio rap isn't gonna be lyrical, the least it can do is be completely musically and structurally apeshit." And considering the remix featuring Busta Rhymes, Lil Wayne, R. Kelly, and Jadakiss somehow feels less disorienting than the original stop-start all-Swizz version, despite being stuffed with four times as many voices, it's still something of a pleasant surprise that it (or the equally crazed "Money In The Bank") was any sort of hit at all, even if the fact that it peaked at No. 83^* probably proves that prime time wasn't quite ready for a song that was more intro than chorus and more sound effects than verses.

Swizz Beatz - "It's Me Snitches/Bitches" [YouTube]

^* At least according to our occasionally incorrect pals at Wikipedia, where I also learned it sampled Joust!

A year ago, I was going pretty crazy for Amerie's gender-bending mixtape Because I Love It, which was anchored by the Tom Ze-sampling "Take Control." The attendant album would go on to become a canary in the coalmine of sorts for the completely messed-up year suffered by the major labels, held back in "reworking" hell for months before being released in Japan, Europe, and pretty much anywhere that wasn't America. (It's still not out here yet; I finally gave in and purchased the album via Amazon UK in the fall.) In March—right around the time that the album's Stateside release was being pushed back to "maybe this summer, we think"—Amerie released "Gotta Work," which seemed to be her way of sending out a signal flare to anyone who was worried about how her album's perpetual purgatory may have been affecting her. Over a Sam & Dave sample that's twisted into a triumphant horn-bleat, Amerie leads a chorus of clones in some always-darkest-before-the-dawn lyrics that she claims came to her while she was making dinner one night. Her sign-off, "I do it because I love it," yelled over a go-go drumbeat and punctuated by even more brass, seems to be a rebuke to her corporate bosses as much as it is an invitation to come along with her for the rest of her musical ride, wherever it may take her.

Amerie - Gotta Work [YouTube]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

LCD released my favorite album of the year—yes, me and seemingly every third rock critic on the planet—so I'm certainly not immune to the pleasures of universal fave "All My Friends" (a song so calculated to appeal to aged emos that I was rethinking including it here up until the last minute) or even the bullheaded mordancy of "North American Scum." But if it was James Murphy's lyrical dip into touchy-feely humanism that gave Sound Of Silver the edge over the sarcastic pastiche of its predecessor, the slow burner "Us. V. Them" revealed itself over the last 10 months as the album's greatest groove, which should still count for something when you're using the word "disco" to describe a band, whatever you're hyphenating it with. The guitars are at their most Afro-disco prickly, the Hi-NRG sequencers throb with Pat Mahoney's thrilling timekeeping, and discounting Silver opener "Get Innocuous," the well-documented Brian Eno vocal affectations are at their funniest.

LCD Soundsystem - "Us. V. Them" [YouTube]
LCD Soundsystem [Official site]

The nitpickers among you will probably take great pains to note that "Before He Cheats" is, like, so 2006. But Carrie Underwood's ode to messing up her ex's ride had a slow climb into the pop world, and I didn't hear it until I caught the crime spree video late one night. The more exposure I got to it, though, the more I grew to appreciate its year-long reign on the pop charts; it combined minor-key, woman-scorned piano balladry, pitch-perfect lyrical details (that line about the cheater "dabbin' on three dollars worth of that bathroom Polo" distilled every noxious thing about a certain type of sleaze into nine words), and Underwood's voice—finally used in service of passion, and not Idol coronation-song puffery—into a country crossover hit that (for once!) didn't have to be a mushy-ass ballad to get mainstream love.

Carrie Underwood - Before He Cheats [YouTube]
Carrie Underwood [Official site]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Sure, the lyrical gun talk (gats in waistbands, pistols shoved in faces, a Frank Lucas namedrop) and trigger-cocking sound effects are a little more icky now that the author of No. 25 is under house arrest for a federal gun charge, but the sly "You Know What It Is" is still a highlight on the anticlimatic T.I. Vs. T.I.P.. While I'm always gonna be a sucker for T.I.'s sidling drawl and taste in button-ups (little anchors!), after about the sixth iPod rewind in a row I realized this song had lodged into my brain thanks to the maddening plink-plonk beat, a backing track catchy enough to survive a shouting Wyclef repeatedly rubber-stamping the fact that he was one of the guys who helped cook it up.

T.I. - "You Know What It Is" [YouTube]
T.I. [Official site]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

I was lukewarm on Tegan and Sara in the earliest stages of their career, but 2004's So Jealous—which included the Jack White-beloved "Walking With A Ghost," and the Veronica Mars-enshrined "I Know I Know I Know"—changed my mind, as it did for probably thousands of other indie kids thanks to its New Pornographers connection. The Con, which came out back in July, is even better, a smart, spiky album full of glimmering pop. After all these months, I'm still stuck on "Back In Your Head," with its half-pleading, half-apologetic lyrics about a romance that's lost its fire. The urgency of the song isn't revealed as much by the lyrics as it is by the deceptively simple keyboard line that frames each cry of "I just want back in your he-eead": In that context, those eight descending notes that, when played alone, would sound like someone fiddling around on a piano become a last-ditch attempt to defibrillate a flatlined love.

Tegan & Sara - Back In Your Head [YouTube]
Tegan & Sara [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

For weeks after Maura introduced me to former Ash guitarist Charlotte Hatherley's second solo album The Deep Blue, I couldn't figure why I was digging on her punchy new wave quite so hard, at least until a Google search revealed that Hatherley is as smitten with bookworm Brit-rockers XTC as I am. (Probably moreso, considering only one of us has gone so far as to collaborate with members of the band.) But while much of The Deep Blue floats its way through dreamy mid-tempo ballads, the galloping "Very Young" hews more towards the jittery, jerky end of the Swindon boys' sound. That break around 1:50 where the rhythm suddenly shifts into an even faster and more fidgety quasi-disco beat is so young Andy Partridge, but Hatherley's not totally beholden to the early '80s (or abandoned her Ash roots), because when I first heard her zig-zagging guitar on the song's intro all I could think was "Marnie Stern gone mall punk."

Charlotte Hatherley - "Very Young" [YouTube]
Charlotte Hatherley [Official Site]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

I first heard—and really, really liked—Bat For Lashes' Fur And Gold in late 2006, but for whatever reason "What's A Girl To Do?," Natasha Khan's chronicle of a woman's waning romantic feelings for her lover, didn't really blossom in my mind until mid-2007. The video, in which Khan and a bunch of furries go all BMX, probably helped, although not because of the ickle bunnies; for me, the video succeeded because it lifted "Girl" out of the context of the album, revealing its perfect inversion of the girl-group formula. Like many songs from that era, "Girl" possesses an overall feeling of longing, but it's different than the sadness that emanates from being rejected; instead, the minor-key "Girl," and its windblown backing choruses, capture the slow dread that creeps over a person when they're spurning someone who they do, deep down, care for.

Also, I feel like I would be doing all of you a disservice if I didn't post the oddest fan-made video I've found for any song on my year-end list:

Tragic, ain't it? And I'm not just talking about the plot.

Bat For Lashes - What's A Girl To Do [YouTube]
Bat For Lashes [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

New York guitarist Marnie Stern earned most of her good press this year for her fleet, bloody-fingered, prog-noise guitar style, and when Maura gave Stern some shine less than a month ago, she praised her playing as being "probably one of the sunshiniest examples of absolute shredding I've heard in many, many years." While it's hard to argue with that, we should also note that songs like Stern's "Every Single Line Means Something," and the best of her rest on debut In Advance Of The Broken Arm, frame her hardcore hammer-ons and spidery melodies within a wonderfully wonky and woozy tune, the sort that makes it seem like no conicidence that we narrowly missed a Stern/Mary Timony show this year at CMJ. Side note: please go to Stern's MySpace page right now, let the Lil Mama "remix" load, and scrape busted grill from floor.

Marnie Stern - "Every Single Line Means Something" [YouTube]
Marnie Stern [MySpace]

In the months since YACHT's "See A Penny, Pick It Up" lit up elbo.ws, entire swaths of blog-band terrain have been strip-mined. Hype cycles have whirled and stopped and kicked back into gear anew. And everyone's seemingly given up to just go back to listening to Radiohead a lot. Yet this weird little ode to romance from Jona Bechtolt, who also created beats for the Blow's better-with-each-listen Paper Television, has bobbed near the top of my iTunes playlist all year, its pitch-shifted vocals and stuttery rhythm kicking around my brain almost incessantly. Maybe it's the fresh-faced lyrics, which provide a cautionary tale of what happens when you bet against love. (FYI: You lose a hundred bucks.) Maybe it's the "'Miss You' and 'Heartbeats' knock boots" sound, because what's sweeter than a song about love that sounds like it was the result of two fine tracks getting it on? Either way, "Penny" was a treat, a "blog song" that actually sounded like it could have been booming out of cars on one of those summer days when temperatures were so high, the whole world seemed warped.

YACHT - See A Penny (Pick It Up) [YouTube]
YACHT[MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness
[Photo via Your Daily Awesome]

Back in August, when Graduation first hit the Web, we were one-listen smitten with the "1940s Hollywood studio orchestra strings/rave Morse Code synth riff" beat of "Flashing Lights," and almost four months later it sounds richer than ever, well after initial fave "Good Life" joined the pile of "2007's overplayed T-Pain collaborations." The track's druggy, mid-tempo disco stomp is a more assured Kanye-matchmaking hook-up between hip-hop and techno than "Stonger"—a cleverly filched hook in search of a better rap/beat—and while some might argue that (lyrically or musically) the haunted survivalism of "Can't Tell Me Nothin" deserves this spot, you can't tell us nothing when those drama-swolen violins start swirlin' during the too-brief outro. We could rewind those 20 seconds all day.

Kanye West feat. Dwele - "Flashing Lights" [YouTube]

It's got lyrics that read like the intro to an "Out Of Control Teenagers!" episode of Tyra and a Timbaland-crafted beat that sounds like it's been in mothballs since Aaliyah passed away, but damned if Tiffany Evans' "Girl Gone Wild" wasn't one of the better unheralded R & B singles of the year, with a dark, herky-jerky beat that drags along the former Star Search winner's robo-assisted chastisement of her peers' aspirations toward walk-on roles in Joe Francis productions. (And I have to ask: Why was this not on Shock Value? If anything, adding this track would have reduced that album's insufferable bloat.) Evans released two singles this year, "Wild" and the Ciara-assisted "Promise Ring" (not a paean to the Jade Tree heroes), although like so many other R & B singers this year, her future as far as more singles (or even a label push) is cloudy; at least she's still got the residuals from her SVU stint (re-airing tomorrow night!) to fall back on until that happens, if it ever does.

Tiffany Evans - Girl Gone Wild [YouTube]
Tiffany Evans [MySpace]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Really, this spot could have gone to either Eve's "Tambourine" or to Beyonce's late-breaking B'Day single "Get Me Bodied," which is to say that, for all of Eve's curled-lip sass or B's hair-pulling ecstasy, the spot really belongs to the semi-ubiquitous Swizz Beatz, responsible for the best of the recent wave of uptempo urban dance records not produced by the Timbahands team or one of their entranced proteges/biters, polyrhythmic late-decade playground jams played by the self-proclaimed one-man-band like a one-man-pep-rally: manic layered percussion, disco whistles, rung alarms, and shouted/sampled hooks, no brass section necessary. (In the end we picked "Tambourine" because it's your typical snapping 21st-century Swizz track but, like, moreso, buzzier and stuffed with little drum hooks and snare fills.) "You gotta shake your ass," but compared to the Euro-steppers ease of "The Way I Are" and its ilk, you gotta work twice as hard here to keep that ass from tripping itself up.

Eve - "Tambourine" [YouTube]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

"2 Hearts" was the first single to come out from Kylie Minogue's c