1)The Black-Eyed Peas, “Boom Boom Pow”
SONG: That “gotta get dat…gotta get dat” thing seems like it was written with the purpose of being parodied a lot (and I definitely remember an SNL sketch to that effect.) So does Fergie–did she have a lot of “street cred” in 2009? Or did people laugh at her? I can’t remember, just that she suddenly seemed to be everywhere. I can’t make up my mind whether I even like her or not–I’m serious, I can’t even seem to formulate an opinion. The song has a sort of pleasant minimal quality to it before the silly “electronica” synth pulses start, along with those terrible distorted “let the BEAT ROCK” voices. I remember hearing this song in 2009, but not anywhere near enough to think it was the number one song of the year. It also seems like it’s over with before it even starts.
VIDEO: I guess I’m always up for a TRON reference, and this couldn’t not be that.

2)Lady Gaga, “Poker Face”
SONG: The chorus to this could have been decent, but the verses are annoying one-note shit. Every time she does the one-note mumbling vocals it makes me wonder if I wasn’t secretly wrong about Michael Stipe e. nun. cee. ay. ting. e. vry. syll. a. ble. back. in. the. day. The best I can say for this song besides the possibly nice chorus is that it’s better than “Bad Romance” and, come to think of it, all her others. I can’t recall ever liking a single one of her hits, which puts her in the same league as fuckin’ TRAIN.
VIDEO: The first time I even remember hearing about her at all was when Michael Danehy posted something here saying “you don’t need to be attractive to be a pop star” and included several pictures of her wearing her goofy getups. Look at her now after a decade of hideous plastic surgery pushing her into the Uncanny Valley and it’s a laugh to think she looks good by comparison here with that icky blonde wig with the overblown bangs and whatnot.

3)Lady Gaga featuring Colby O’Donis, “Just Dance”
SONG: Looking over the hits this year, I wanted to say that 2009 was where it was finally cemented that pop music was....something, like it was officially all based on neo-80s style–listen to those blooping 1985 synths and tell me that we weren’t totally in some new era as of 2009…but that’s probably a terrible overgeneralization. Sure, yeah, it definitely is. Let’s say that. But listening to this…I just kind of have to wonder if much has changed in the last 17 years (!!)…maybe it has, but this is the kind of song that makes me want to make such overgeneralizations. It really is a total neo-80s song, perhaps not as annoying as her others, still not great, but…does anyone else feel this way about 2009? Anyone?
VIDEO: People doing some sort of house/closet/couch party thingy, lots of bizarre behavior, not that it matters as I will likely never watch this video again.

4)The Black-Eyed Peas, “I Gotta Feeling”
SONG: Teen party shit made by a bunch of 30-somethings–I actually think Foster The People nailed the vibe this song was going for with “Helena Beat” the following year, but that might just be me, or maybe because nobody in Foster The People was 34 in 2009. The disco beat sounds terrible, like something Cher would go for. I cracked up at the “mazel tov” in the lyrics, though. Hell, the vibe of this song reminds me of Weezer, something deliberately made for “the kids.”
VIDEO: Party footage, with the band members bouncing around like 13 year olds and an obvious, miserably sexed-up Fergie trying to get attention by parading around in her underwear and doing quasi lesbian shit with other girls in the video. Her hair has green streaks in it a decade before Billie Eilish, or at least that’s how it is when they go to a rave and play with neon paint cans.

5)Taylor Swift, “Love Story”
SONG: Well, here she is, this is her first appearance in one of these posts, reminding me that she’s been famous for nearly 20 years without ever seriously fucking up in public like Britney Spears did in less than a fourth of that. This isn’t a terribly good song though, and I recall hearing “You Belong With Me” a lot more–a song that I actually kind of liked the first sixty thousand times I heard it, then got sick of after fifteen million more public plays. I’m not hearing much of a hook in this song and I am looking for that because after all, she has become an “acclaimed” songwriter, has she not? If I’m going to give this song anything at all it’s that I like the key change in the last verse, but I’d have gotten rid of the dumb country violin.
VIDEO: Princessy girl-in-a-castle shit with corsets and crap. Was she copying this sort of thing from Carrie Underwood or one of those other blondes? Her voice has certainly changed and I guess a number of people have probably forgotten she started as “country.”

6)Flo Rida featuring Ke$ha, “Right Round”
SONG: Whelp there’s the 80s again–and actually, I’d have easily preferred a straight cover of the silly Dead Or Alive song than Flo Rida’s one note rapping. Keeping with what I’ve been saying, notice the 80s synth-bloop cascades popping up towards the end of the song.
VIDEO: Glitter-all-themed stuff with a lot of girls shaking their rears. Nothing much to report.

7)Jason Mraz, “I’m Yours”
SONG: I guess there had to be something in this list with acoustic guitars, and this one starts out with a guitar tone reminding me of the beginning of “Band On The Run,” but that’s probably just me. I swear to God there’s some other song out there with the exact same verse melody and/or chorus as “I’m Yours,” but I can’t be arsed to look it up. The song is pretty trite, anyway, and I don’t remember it from 17 years ago anyway.
VIDEO: Mr. Mraz, a white dude in a hat, goes hiking in the woods with some friends. Yippie skip. Should I just quit mentioning the videos? I’m barely able to pay attention to most of them anyway.

8)Beyoncé, “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)”
SONG: Didn’t remember this song had a subtitle. Moderately catchy chorus, I guess, but that’s easy when you just hammer an annoying phrase into people’s heads. I hadn’t much paid attention to the backing music behind the vocals before, which sounds like a bunch of sentient computers going nuts–loud Casio handclaps and weird minor-key swells under the “put a ring on it” bits.
VIDEO: Leotards. Nothing else. PG-rated jackoff material. Not that I’d necessarily fault anybody who did. The girl on Beyoncé’s right has a nicer ass than she does. The bit at the end where she stops, looks right into the camera, and pants out of breath for ten seconds is weird, even if it was intended as a ojke.

9)Kanye West, “Heartless”
SONG: You know, I’ve spent very little time with Mr. West’s actual music, either when he first showed up or in the years when he turned into the world’s most deliberately nutty celebrity. I know some of his albums were very acclaimed back in the day, though there were debates over how much he actually knew how to do (debates HERE, at Music Babble–didn’t Derrick Stuart claim Kanye barely knew how to work the mixing board?) Certainly this song would indicate that he’s nothing special–very one-note, very monotonous, 160 seconds of boredom in need of an extra chord or two. His vocals are uninteresting, as well.
VIDEO: This is actually halfway creative–animation with an emphasis on parodying and referencing Pop Art. I guess that’s sort of cultured of him, isn’t it? Between that and the King Crimson reference he did that one time, you’d guess Mr. Ye was sort of a cultured nerd recluse type, eh? Well, we all knew better. At least it makes up for how boring the song is.

10)The All-American Rejects, “Gives You Hell”
SONG: ROCK MUSIC!!! ROCK EOROCK!!! RRRAWWWWKKK!!!!…oh wait, no, it’s a dinky four-chord electric piano ballad with post-emo vocals and an occasional appearance by a “guitar.” When did these guys show up–2000 or so? Right? I don’t know them very well at all. You know, sometimes the yelping vocals, generic teen-friendly feel, and sunny playful outlook of 2000-2010 rock music sometimes actually does hit my nostalgia button these days, even though back then I was barely listening to new bands at all, just classics, and had pretty much joined the “rock is dead” philosophical brigade for life by then, but enough time has passed to the point where maybe some of this stuff looks good in comparison to NOW…but no, this song doesn’t do that. It reminds me of the one obligatory good song on a post-1996 Weezer song that made you still have faith in the band, except in this case it’s not that “good.”
VIDEO: They tried to make this video entertaining, with the lead singer playing two guys, one who he actually is and one who is a 1950s sitcom dad type. He really acts his heart out. Too bad I don’t know his name and never will.

SONGS FROM THE REMAINDER OF THE TOP 100 THAT I’M GLAD NOT TO BE LISTENING TO BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T MAKE THE TOP 10:

Kings Of Leon - “Use Somebody”
Miley Cyrus - “The Climb”
Beyonce - “Halo”
Britney Spears - “Circus”
Miley Cyrus - “Party In The U.S.A.”
Pink - “So What”
Nickelback - “Gotta Be Somebody”
Lady Gaga - any of the other hits she had this year (there’s several)
Asher Roth - “I Love College”
Green Day - “21 Guns”

SONGS FROM THE REMAINDER OF THE TOP 100 THAT I ACTUALLY LIKED:

I have to put an asterisk next to “You Belong With Me,” for the reasons I already mentioned above. Aside from that, fuck it.

NOTES:

If I were REALLY trying to make the case that something “changed” this year, one thing that occurred to me is that this is the first year since 1990 (the first year I covered in these posts) that I did not hear a single generic R&B ballad. Take that, people of color!!!