In the year where the unwritten rule was for the top chart artists to be single females preferably with a single name, that alone should have been more cloying than it turned out to be. For me, the grim reality was that few of them had anything that grabbed me much, though the good news was that few of them had anything that I totally despised. The newly-declared single Katy Perry managed to be listenable at times, Rihanna even had a song or two I found entertaining. I should have been sick to death of Adele, though despite her insistence on doing so, the act of setting fire to rain is physically impossible in this galaxy. Adele earlier this year became the only artist besides The Beatles to ever have two studio albums in a weekly top 5. She also became the first to have the #1 single for the entire year in both US & UK, but with two different songs (“Rolling In The Deep” in US “Someone Like You” in UK). That all said, I gotta say that it was hard to find a top and bottom ten, and I didn’t want to just plunder the X Factor finalist singles for the latter, so I had to settle for top 5’s.

THE TOP FIVE: 

5. Ed Sheeran – The A Team  The most unlikely looking rock star, (and even using the first name Ed rather than Eddie sounded pretty un-rock) this sweet acoustic number managed to bust the female monopoly, and hang around the charts from mid-summer til just before Christmas. He managed to miss a few couplets in trying to find everything that rhymed with A-Team, e.g. Beijing, slate clean, hygiene…

4. Sak Noel – Loca People  Some of the same elements that made 2010’s “We No Speak Americano” my favorite record of that year. There was that silly dance beat, presided over by the intentionally monotoned spoken vocal of the uncredited Spanish singer, and the multiple repetitions of the phrase “What the f***” It all made for an artless yet infectious record.

3. Aloe Blacc – I Need A Dollar  Even though the currency is diffferent, this one caught on in UK and around the world, simply because there were so many economies going to hell, and we needed a song to make light of it. 

2. Nicky Minaj – Super Bass  Her insistence on portraying herself as a big-time hard girl, right down to the occasional wardrobe malfunction, got really dumb after awhile. Every rap was this high-intensity, “I’m so Ba-a-ad” statement. Then there came this one, with a bit of a satirical almost Valley-Girl take on her image, topped off by the fact that the woman can really sing!

1. Military Wives – Wherever You Are  I’m an old softie for a beautiful tune, but the fact that Gareth Malone was able to direct real women singing about a real situation with such unbridled passion was an amazing feat and a deserving Christmas #1. They’re not great singers, but that becomes unimportant when you see, near the end of the video, the women themselves overcome with emotion and consoling one another. It made me temporarily forget my total repulsion to war and the seemingly endless conflicts that US and UK have continued to wage with the Middle East.  

NOW THE BOTTOM FIVE:

5. DJ Fresh feat. Sian Evans – Louder  As the record progressed, the singer made good on her promise to get not only louder but faster.The one thing it didn’t get was better. 

4. Snoop Dogg VS. David Guetta – Sweat  Nicky Minaj to the contrary, reason #356 why rappers shouldn’t attempt to sing. Snoop manages to find an occasional deviation from the single note he dwells on throughout, but his voice, for lack of a better word, is synthesized, and very likely auto-tuned as well. 

3. Jessie J – Who You Are  The fifth single and title tune from her multi-platinum album, if they’d managed to hold back and let this one remain an album cut, I might have had a better overall opinion of Miss J. Can’t accuse her of trying to sound like Adele, but only because their albums came out at the same time. Otherwise, this sounds like Adele having a rough time on the toilet.

2. Bruno Mars – Grenade  I did a total diatribe blog on this one earlier in the year, and it still grates on me, mostly for the same reasons. If the measure of the mate’s faithfulness is something along the lines of a suicide pact, that’s not healthy.

1. Kanye West w/ Jay-Z – Otis  Two stalwarts of hip-hop combined forces, but seemed to have nothing to say beyond “We’re so powerful, we were able to get an OK to use what would be an unobtainable sample for most artists.” So as the late Otis Redding is in the background repeating his “Got-ta got-ta” section of the classic “Try A Little Tenderness,” the two spend the bulk of the record doing their usual posturing. Happily, it wasn’t a huge hit on either side of the pond. 

So that’s my takes. Agree? Disagree?