Ten things about the new Magnetic Fields album

1. It is called Distortion.

2. The cover goes something like this:

3. It is fucking brilliant. Easily Stephin Merritt's best album in about decade (since 69 Love Songs, basically). Not that Stephin Merritt has made many albums in the last decade, but y'know.
4. The production is fuzzy to say the least. Think Yeah! Oh Yeah! or The Flowers She Sent and the Flowers She Said She Sent but standing even closer to the amp.
5. Merritt is indisputably one the greatest living songwriters. I know it, you know it, Tracey Thorn knows it. Which is why, even when some songs sound like they're becoming unlistenable messes, they're still totally amazing pop tracks underneath the umpteen layers of distortion Merritt lays on here.
6. Shirley Simms gets lots to do here. There's a song called California Girls, which feels like the sequel to Yeah! Oh Yeah! The chorus goes "I hate California girls", and eventually Simms starts planning to murder them. It all gets wonderfully dark and fucked up.
7. The album seems a bit too long at 14 tracks, but then you realise that the guy released a record with nearly 70 songs on so, really, you should stop being such a fucking whinger.
8. It sounds like a record the band could have made in the mid-90's. Since no record they released in the mid-90's was worth less than four stars, this cannot be a bad thing.
9. Merritt has made the most depressing Christmas song ever. Track five, Mr. Mistletoe. The campaign for a MF Christmas number one starts here.
10. The best tracks are: Three Way, California Girls, Mr. Mistletoe, Please Stop Dancing, Too Drunk To Dream and The Nun's Litany.

Overall, 4.5 stars. Well done Magnetic Fields.

Distortion is released on the 14th January

I got soul but i'm not a Soulja

This weekend, Crank That by Soulja Boy will be going into the top 3. Nothing wrong with that, right? It's sort of admirable, really. The guy's 17, produces his own stuff and thanks to a combination of shameless self promotion and Youtube luckiness, he's had one of the biggest hits of the year in the US. What's more extraordinary is that Crank That sounds nothing like anything else in the charts. And it's an absolutely fucking terrifying pop song. We're talking Marble House/Waking The Witch levels of fear here.

Take a look at the video:



On the surface, it's basically your typical hip-hop crossover promo, albeit on a tiny looking budget (and the label signed him purely on the merits of some kids dancing? It's no wonder the record industry's fucked). Until it gets to the part where the elderly woman with buck teeth comes in. Oh God, oh Jesus Christ. It's like an Aphex Twin video, innit? It's the Cha-Cha Slide directed by Chris Cunningham. The Macarena meets Windowlicker. You get the idea, i'm sure.

And that's without even getting to the song itself. The most barren sounding US urban single since Me & U, nothing happens, basically. Using just a steel drum, cleverly placed hi-hats and finger clicks, and hits that put the fear of god into to me, he manages to make it last close to four minutes. Four minutes. If The Knife had put out something like this, probably without using the phrase "Superman that ho" though, the reception would probably be 'it's a bit avante garde, isn't it?'. That it got to the top of the charts in America is testament to the power of tip-exed sunglasses and a dance the kids can copy.

Even though it's abso-fucking-lutley terrifying, and the video has old lady badteeth, it's managed to do what few pop songs can- connect with a young audience in a massive way- to the extent that they'll go on Youtube and learn the dance. You think shit like Scouting For Girls inspires that kind of devotion? I'd take it over that self-satisfied, Britney-cribbing D.A.N.C.E crap. Mainly cos Soulja Boy has better t-shirts, no?

But i don't look baaacccckkkk....

Right, that's your lot for 2007, unless something amazing/terrible happens. So i'll end with what is obviously the best pop image of the year...



Thank you, and goodnight.

The Top 40 Singles of 2007

Last year, this was a piece of piss. From May, it was absolutely clear that Maneater was the single of the year. It's not that 2007's been so great for singles that it's been impossible to choose, or so bad that none really stuck out, it's just, for me at least, there's not been one single that cried out '2007'. I'll explain my choice for number one later in the article, but it's a deserving champ for various reasons, and a fucking great song to boot. Now, on with the list...



It’s not customary to begin a ‘top 40’ by sort of bitching on something, but I’m pretty sure I still don’t know whether I like this song. I know it’s catchy, well produced and has a cheerleader chant that ain’t topping the Bay City Rollers’ Saturday Night, but is still pretty infectious. It’s hard to properly love a song about a home wrecker. The handclaps help though.



All hail the return of handbag house. Designed to be accompanied by footage of people dancing shirtless at the BCM, I absolutley admire Booty Luv for taking a really fucking cynical prospect (nicking the best bits of the last six Clubland compilations and repackaging them for Radio One) and making it seem like the most fun in the world. Epic disco strings over wholesale dance beats, with lyrics that were probably made up on the day of recording, and anyone who says a big whooshy noise from the end of the middle-8 going into the chorus isn’t the best thing that can happen in a dance song is a bloody fool.



This wasn’t a massive favourite at first- it seemed a bit too messy, obvious- M.I.A. playing a version of M.I.A. aimed at the indie kids. And it’s still the second weakest track on Kala (seeing as it’s the best album of the year, that says very little). Structurally it’s still a total wreck and that sample is way annoying, overall it’s kind of like being in an aeroplane. You have no idea how it’s staying afloat, and don’t particularly care to work out the details. The only song this year you could describe as ‘dayglo’ that wasn’t made by total cunts.



Less of a post-WEH slump, more of a ‘WTF’ choice for a follow-up single. Seriously, the album’s got Be Mine!, Who’s That Girl and Crash and Burn Girl, and Robyn chooses the ‘nazi-pimp’ song? Okaaay. Anyway, whereas With Every Heartbeat had our heroine quietly being heartbroken, this has her quietly whaling on a total douchebag. Konichiwa Bitches for your Radio 2 listener, if you will. The arrangement here’s gorgeous- subtle strings and guitars over a hard as nails beat, it’s what a ‘ballad after the hit song’ should sound like.



Like Brian Higgins, Animal Collective have the ability to take seemingly unsuitable elements and turn them into amazing pop songs. Unlike Brian Higgins, they didn’t write Call The Shots, and as such, they’re not in the top 20 singles of the year. Not quite the masterclass in insanely addictive/random noise pop that Grass was, it’s still pretty impressive, and they’ve got the best yelps of all the bands in the blogosphere.



Fact: Cathy Dennis on autopilot > 98% of pop songwriters on their A-game. That would be the only explanation as to why what is, to all intents and purposes, Since U Been Gone, Take 653 somehow becomes a great pop song. It’s not the ‘Babes themselves- Amelle does her growly thing, Keisha wails over the last few choruses, Heidi fights the urge to jump ship, they’re all fairly competent but a bit meh, and sound undeserving of the kudos their name carries. To cut a long story short, if Paris Hilton did this, it wouldn’t have been in the UK top 10, never mind number 1, but would still be somewhere in the mid-30s on here. That line about not letting or last kiss be our last is good too, innit?



Charlotte looks a LOT like Karen O in the video for this. Still working out whether that can be classed as a good thing. This is lovely though. There’s distorted guitars, random piano bits and almost catchy melodies and it really doesn’t go anywhere but sounds absolutley gorgeous doing so. Bonus points for the middle-8 breakdown.



Gee, the Arcade Fire are actually sort of the Biggest Band in the World now, right? At least the biggest one whose members don’t have an average age of over 50. They sound like it here. As usual, they’re a lyric about young love and a bottle of eyeliner away from being totally emo, but then again there’s only about three artists in the world who aren’t. If the middle-8 doesn’t at least provoke some kind of reaction, it probably means you’re on the verge of being unhooked from life-support.



The second song in a row that starts with a solitary organ. Hmm. If I had to write up a list of reasons why Bleeding Love is better than Intervention, it would likely begin with ‘has ace drums’. It’s true though- without the snare –half Timbaland, half 80’s cheese, although the difference between the two is becoming negligible, I suppose- Bleeding Love would basically be a decent ballad. Instead, The Drums make Bleeding Love the best single by any X-Factor entrant ever, and the best second-single by a reality TV artist since No Good Advice. High praise indeed.



Shitting on Rufus Wainwright from a great height (the title of his next album, surely), Jens Lekman is easily the best indie-pop songwriter since Sufjan, if not Stephin. It helps that he’s got a killer voice too, one that can convince you a track about accidentally chopping off your finger is the single most romantic thing in the world. Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo, to give it it’s full title, is one of my least listened to songs on Night Falls Over Kortedala, mainly cos it’s at the end. It’s still amazing though, and anyone who doesn’t add ‘where more people who win go’ to the end of the chorus watches way less TV than they should.



Do you think if Mark Ronson wasn’t fitter than the artists he produced, anyone would give a toss about his own albums? There’s still the whole ‘urban beats’ shtick he has going on here (leading from the first chorus to the second verse, if you want to be specific), and for some reason there’s a weird sitar thing in the middle-8. Payne’s vocals are pretty good but it’s the chorus bells that make this seriously great. unless we take criminal records into account, it’s the first time you can favourably compare Ronson to Phil Spector.



Call me a masochist, but I’ve got a thing for near unlistenable vocals over twee pop songs. I’ve also got a thing for random noises that turn into full on instrumentation. And I’ve got a thing for steel drums. This should be song of the year then, no? Not quite. This doesn’t so much flirt with being annoying as much as have being annoying’s secret child and let you raise it as your own. That last sentence made absolutely no sense whatsoever. I think I’m ready to write for the NME now.



This is the one that sounds suspiciously like Come On Eileen. The album’s one of the best of the year, and it’s a joy to see Wolf knuckling down to make a few proper (read: not about child molestation, rape and whatever Bloodbeat was about) pop songs. Blimey, the bit at the start doesn’t half sound like the Go! Team, does it? In all honesty, this might as well be Mika (if he dropped the ‘unlistenable vocals’ thing and wrote more than three lines of lyrics per song), but it’s hard to begrudge Wolf for putting out a song about being happy and stuff when it sounds this good.



It’s not really been Sophie’s year, bless her. She started off running through Venice with Sophie Muller following her with a camera and ended it singing for 20,000 Take That fans in a desperate attempt to drum up interest in her forthcoming best-of. The second Cathy Dennis song on the chart so far, it’s Blondie, innit? Well, Blondie rewritten with synth parts beamed in from the middle of the 24th century. It shouldn’t really work- Sophie’s enunciation makes her sound more like a baddie from The Avengers than a madly-enamoured stalker- but it does. It’s a wonder though, when she had the third best Xenomania song of the year sitting in the middle of Trip The Light Fantastic, why she chose Me and My Imagination as the second single. Some people, eh?



I love, love, love Bertine Zetlitz. She’s probably the only popstar in the world whose post childbirth comeback would be a song telling her daughter that the world is totally unfair. The joy of it, as usual with Zetlitz, is that there’s not really much to the song itself, it just sounds fucking massive. The chorus is perfect, tinged with regret for something that’s yet to happen, with a lush synth part in the background that sounds like it’s going round and round, like a ambulance siren in a washing machine. It’s almost uncomfortable- there’s more honesty here than in the back catalogues your five favourite indie bands combined. Perhaps the reason why she’d never take off in the UK.



As the year when all the Sugababes (past and present) were involved in an album draws to a close, it seems that 3.0 were the ones with the huge hit, Mut-a-ya had the best song, but Siobhan was the only one who managed to release a consistent and frequently impressive album. Although the single choices from Ghosts have been, erm, questionable, six months after it’s release, So You Say is perhaps more charming than it was on it’s original release. Mournful without being whingey, Donaghy’s tale of a relationship gone sour is subtle but not bland, and has a chorus that sounds like an atomic bomb being dropped.



The Overpowered album campaign might have used the contrast of high art/low culture as it’s recurring motif, but there’s nothing vaguely artsy about Let Me Know. A massive, dumb as fuck dance stomper with pianos that kind of went out of style in the mid-90’s, but oh well, who cares, there’s something about Murphy that turns this into more than just a homage to decade old dance songs. It’s just refreshing, in a time when Madonna has to work with Timbaland to keep down with da kidz, to see a non-disposable popstar doing totally unique, amazing music.



I think if Kate Bush was on Sub Pop and made The Dreaming in 2007, this is probably what the third single would sound like. There’s not much higher praise than that…



The second best twee-but-charming-indie-pop-song-with-a-catchy-glockenspiel-riff of the year, not as good as Los Campesinos for a myriad of reasons. Mostly that Mr. Dear perhaps pushes the twee factor a bit too much, resulting in the midsection of I Am John nearly becoming a big gloopy sugary mess. When the multi tracked vocals finally come in in the last quarter, it all gets a bit uplifting, becoming a Sufjan-lite indie anthem. Of course, like all good Swedes, Svanangen knows anything that sounds uplifting must always be accompanied by an incredibly depressing sentiment. Lovely.



Oh, who cares that Britney’s actual involvement in the whole Blackout project is likely to have amounted to 45 minutes singing down a mobile phone. And that this, along with half of the album, is already sounding dated. Great pop never really goes out of style, Britney should know, she’s been making it for a decade. She’s also one of the only honest megastars out there- her songs deal with nothing more than tabloids, going to clubs and shagging, y’know, the only three things that Britters does nowadays. The argument that Gimme More isn’t really about, well, anything is nonsense, and only really used by people who can’t see that Led Zeppelin releasing a best-of on the eve of their reunion is every bit as cynical as the Spice Girls doing the same. Just shut up and dance, motherfuckers.



Tragically, it seems Tori just can’t be bothered anymore. After the shitshow that was The Beekeeper, she writes herself her most obvious crossover hit since a sorta fairytale, but does fuck all to promote it. A strange/smart video coupled with a few amazing and ridiculous remixes (y’know, for Radio One) could have sent Bouncing Off Clouds into the top 10, and would’ve made the American Doll Posse project appealing for people who were actually outside her immediate fanbase. But who needs new fans, when you can charge old ones £25 for t-shirts, right? What’s striking about Bouncing Off Clouds is how effortless is feels- it’s not lazy, or forceful, it’s just a really great pop song. The dance beats come in at precisely the right time too, which is nice, I guess.



In which Maximo (no I will not put that bloody awkward accent over the top of the i) Park pack more hooks into one song than they have done thus far in their career. There’s so many choruses here, it might as well be a Xenomania production (Paul Smith’s no Cheryl TweedyCole, admittedly). The middle-8, where it gets all desperate and howly is particularly amazing. The finest guys'n'guitars indie moment since Futureheads took their shoes off and threw them in the lake.



If they’d have released this first instead of How To Save a bloody Life, perhaps we could have had six months of a slightly creepy/Bonnie Tyler-esque video instead of a bunch of kids jumping off chairs and working out whether the guitarist from the band was actually Zach in Desperate Housewives or whether he just looks a bit like him. Seriously though, by The Fray’s standards, Cable Car is the hard shag to How To Save a Life’s Dashboard Confessional induced make-out session. Sporting metaphors, stupid, stupid lyrics and a massive singalong chorus. Who said they were just for Mondeo drivers?



BOOM-BA-BOOM-tsh is, without a doubt, the greatest intro of all time, no? Phil Spector started it, Camera Obscura indified it, and Stephin Merritt did it fifteen years ago when he was making albums on a 25p budget. I’m pretty sure it’s never been followed by a creepy-as-fuck harpsichord riff though, or a chorus that sounds like a Bond theme if he were under the order of the Munsters or something. Make no mistake, Natasha Khan hasn’t an ounce of originality, but who really needs to be innovative when you can have giant scary rabbits riding bikes at night. Yes? Yes.



There’s only about two musical moments in 2007 that match Nick Cave spitting out the words “revolting little Chihuahua”. This answers the age old question “what’s better than a song about romancing?”. Obviously, the answer is a song about a pervy old man who’s romancing but not getting anything from the laydeez. Don’t let singer/songwriter types tell you any different- this is how a track about unrequited lust should be handled.



This year’s official indie-crossover country artist (previous years title holders included the Dixie Chicks and Loretta Lynn. Birds with issues, really). As easy as it is to take the piss out of the genre, when a country song’s done right, it’s more relatable than any other kind of music on earth, even when it bears little resemblance to your life (this is from someone who’s spent many a drunken night howling along to Family Tree). Lambert’s witty description of small town life as actually half social commentary (“sometimes things don’t work out y’all). Refreshingly, for a year when British music’s been 90% whinge about how rubbish things are in small towns, Lambert’s never judgemental, choosing to have a bit of a drive in the middle-8 rather than start a rant about everyone being a cunt. I’m pretty sure there’s not been a song about death this cute in a long time.



Wah wah wah, she sold herself to Steve Jobs. Get over yourselves. Less likely artists have flogged their songs to stranger companies than Apple. Dragonette were singing over a Vick’s vapour rub advert the other day. It wasn’t I Get Around, although that would have been HILARIOUS. Anyway, 1234 works so well because, like most of Feist’s original material, it’s a really simple, obvious idea (a nice little ditty about being a teenager) done in a totally romantic, old fashioned, but somehow non-schmaltzy style. As usual, Feist’s performance is stunning, part-lounge singer, part-indie goddess, it doesn’t matter if she’s on TV every five minutes looking blue and sparkly and stuff, because it’s going to take at nothing short of a Feist-inspired mass murder to spoil this song. Ace video too.



The synths do sound somehow familiar. I’ve heard about half a dozen people say it, and it’s true. It might just be that Song 4 Mutya is so straightforward, it’s hard to believe that nobody’s done it before, sometime between Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and Negotiate With Love. So it’s both dated and futuristic, and as such, gets older but more likeable with every listen. Personally, I like the idea of it being about the Sugababes but Mutya not realising (in the same way that Richard X never told Rachel Stevens her biggest hit was about giving head), but that’s probably because I don’t like the idea of it being something Estelle passed on to Mutya. Much sunnier than most of the Sugababes’ electro stuff, Push The Button aside, although this was the woman who made a description of her sexy ass sound like the most innocent thing in the world. She could probably render a Knife song suitable for Same Difference.



There are literally 30,000 end-of year singles round ups with this on the top spot. They can probably describe why it’s great better than I can. All I know is that it does that really amazing thing where one riff is played all the way through and it doesn’t become annoying. And that it’s not as good as Call The Shots but is better than Song 4 Mutya. Christ, it’s almost like i’m expected to write about music or something.


As much fun as Sexy! No, No, No… was, essentially it featured Xenomania sounding like a parody of Xenomania (look, weird structure! ADD friendly choruses! Nicola relegated to the middle-8!), the smartest move Fascination have ever (seriously, have you seen some of their decisions? Letting Sophie put out Today The Sun's On Us as a single? Eesh.) made is choosing to put out the slow burner. No, it’s not got eight choruses and a sample from an obscure Parisian trip-hop artist, but it’s all the better for it. Beautifully simple, more melancholy than most of the Girl’s proper ballads are and with the most gorgeous ‘oohs’ you hear all year.



This feels to big to be ignored. It’s hard to believe a song this stunning is yet to be a major hit of any kind. Adele hangs around with the Hoxtonites, but she’s really leagues ahead of them. Her voice is just…fucking amazing, cutting through those rolling piano chords, clear and expressive but still smoky and mysterious. More so than Winehouse, she could be the true voice of a generation. As witnessed by the acoustic guitar performance of Hometown Glory, she could perform this over an orchestra of clanging pans, and it’d still be a thing of pure beauty.



It’s Bjork singing over a Timberlake-era Timbaland song, which alone would allow it a position in the top 40 singles of the year. Earth Intruders is a better pop song, yes, but Innocence is the main event- Bjork sounds like she’s fighting with that huge, chunky drum beat, and there’s a moment of pure ecstasy in the intro when it almost turns into a Missy song. There’s no real chorus, and only a hint at a middle-8, it doesn’t matter. How this didn’t go stratospheric is a question that needs answering



Yep, to all intents and purposes it’s a cover of Sweet Temptation. So what? The moment where British indie realised that the kids like big massive pop songs as much as they like hiding the fact they do, Bloc Party realised that their own tracks would be roughly 83 times better if performed on synths. Lyrically, it’s ambigious (Kele, you’re sooo original) but could well be a dig at post-Monkeys indie. The dance element, however cynical it might be, works a treat, and if you’re not totally swept up by the end of the intro, you’re probably not listening loud enough. Dance music, innit?



Ahead of Tangled Up not being the year’s biggest selling album and Mika’s continued success, 2007’s most glaring musical injustice is Dragonette failing to sell, well, any records. I Get Around is the kind of introduction most pop groups would kill for. Catchy enough for Radio One, slaggy enough for dance fans, that it didn’t get through to either is totally puzzling. I guess this position isn’t just for I Get Around though. It’s for an amazing album that nobody listened to. For two incredible, filthy but witty videos that went over the heads of the ‘stop this smut!’ brigade. For covering Calvin Harris and improving it no end. For, in spite of the lack of success they’ve had, being among the top three pop groups of the year. Here’s to a better 2008.



You want high concept? Two drums, one singer, no guest verse from Jay-Z, and lyrics about make-up. Lip Gloss is much more fun that it’s minimal production would suggest, and the whole ‘yeah, I’m fucking hotter than you, cunt’ hasn’t been done with this much vigour since Milkshake. There’s some really great pop moments here, more than you’d expect. “Miss McClarson?” being the highlight, obviously. The smartest dumb song of the year.



I, for one, didn’t think that M.I.A.’s best single of the year would be a cover of a 1980’s Bollywood song. Nor M.I.A. doing a cover of a Bollywood song would be as faithful to the original as this is. She’s still politically minded (a passing reference to Darfur), but Jimmy is practically a love song, something nobody expected from the woman who opened her debut album with the statement “I got the bombs to make you blow” or whose last flirtation with musical romance was a song about robbing someone’s phone in vengeance for them stealing her boyfriend. The strings are gorgeous and epic sounding (who knew that Boney M had such an impact on the modern pop landscape?), Switch’s production blurs the line between modern r’n’b and Bollywood disco and Maya’s never sounded better. The most delightful surprise of 2007.



I wasn’t in love at first. It’s undeniably catchy (nothing short of a screwdriver is going to remove that riff from your head), and the vocals are twee and kinda charming, but there was something...contrived about it. As if indie was getting bored of itself so decided to add a violin or two. Over time, it started to make perfect sense though. What The Arcade Fire on a ferris wheel instead of a steam train, You! Me! Dancing! is so joyously simple in it’s execution that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t drawn in crayons by children. Most indie groups spend a lifetime attempting to capture the spirit of the their generation, LC! do it in eight words, in the outro and almost hide it under layers of giddy instrumentation. Daft as owt, but pretty near perfect.



Rihanna is not our generation’s Madonna. That’s Robyn (business savvy, ahead of her time, knows exactly the right people, c’mon who else is it going to be?). Rihanna is the new Kylie. She’s sweet, if somewhat bland, and has one major major thing going for her- amazing songs. And at the moment she’s better than Kylie because she makes tracks about going to clubs that actually sound like tracks about going to clubs, but that’s for another article. So, Umbrella, the cause of several thousand “isn’t the weather shit, it must be Rihanna’s fault LOL” jokes this summer, eight months later is still in the lower reaches of the top 40. It’s a track with the kind of broad appeal that no song’s had since Crazy. It’s got a hip-hop beat, an electro backing and a huge pop chorus, doesn’t specifically belong to any of those genres, but could fit into any of them. If your heart doesn’t feel like it’s ready to burst by the time the middle-8 surges into the chorus, you should probably check your pulse. Massive in every sense of the word, even if Rihanna never has another hit again (she will do though, trust me) it doesn’t matter, she’s had a song that was something 99.9% of artists can only ever dream of achieving- zeitgeist. Not bad for a track about keeping the rain off your head, eh? (eh, eh, eh… stop there –Ed)



Not that there’s anything wrong with the studio version of Tony The Beat, I just prefer the Rex The Dog remix is all. The studio version would be in the top five, easily, Rex The Dog just gives it that extra boost of amazing. On paper, the idea of Rex doing a remix of Tony The Beat seems kind of pointless. He usually specialises in turning undanceable dance music (mainly The Knife) into something very poppy and highly danceable. TTB was already loads of fun to be starting off with. Rex’s version just adds that extra something. Synths mainly. You reach the chorus thinking there’ no way it’ll get any better than that, and BAM, along comes the middle-8 with a massive drum-led breakdown to kick you in the nuts for thinking it had climaxed. There’s not much more to say- it’s a very good song made into an even more very good song. Plus, did you see the video that they made for it (the one with the puppets, the not ugly whores titsorama official one)? Amazing.



In all honesty, I didn’t think I’d be putting With Every Heartbeat in this position. It’s nearly two years now since it first surfaced on the internet, half a year since it got to number one. When compiling the list, initially, it was in the top five, but Rihanna, The Sounds, M.I.A. and Lil Mama had all been on the top spot before I decided to put Robyn there. The reason isn’t because it’s far and wide the best song of the year. It isn’t, that’s Your Arms Around Me by Jens Lekman (however, since he never released it as a single, he can go shove it). It’s because it’s awesome song, totally depressing, unbelievably catchy, and when the drums come in during the final section, you’ll swear that Robyn snuck up and placed them right next to your chest, it’s also because of what it represents. Real pop music, made by proper popstars, with no cynicism or pandering to particular demographics. The moment I realised how big that Swedish chick with the Be Mine! song all the bloggers loved three years had become was when I saw some guy in a football shirt coming out of a pub in Leeds singing “baby we can make it aaaaaalllrrrrigggghhhhhttttt….”. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t part the audience Robyn expected to reach. But she did. And for one week in August, With Every Heartbeat was the biggest song in Britain. Would this be on top of this list if it didn’t get to number one? Probably not. But i’m documenting the forty best singles of the year, and, as the format slowly dies out, it’s hard to think of one other single this year that proved, indisputably that intelligent, independently-minded pop music still had a place in the British charts and in the world of pop. Robyn deserves the success she has had, and With Every Heartbeat deserves the title of the best single of 2007.

The Top 10 TV Shows Of 2007

It's come to the time of the year where lists are made. Christmas lists, shopping lists, hell, even the sex offenders register probably gets busier in December. But mostly, it's lists that round up the year, albums, singles, movies, and TV show. We'll be covering the top 10 albums, and top 40 singles of the year, but first, with the writer's strike in full swing, and the second half of the 2007-2008 season seeming unlikely to happen, it's time to look back on the best television shows of 2007. In many ways, it's been a terrible year for TV: the strike, the end of Veronica Mars, Heroes getting crappy, the continuing success of the Friday Night Project... you get the picture? It's not all bad, however, and here are ten of the best things on TV in 2007.



The only show this year to cause a 'won'tsomebodythinkofthechildren' reaction from middle England (read: the Daily Mail kicked up a bit of a fuss), Skins isn't great because of the sex, drugs and yet more sex. It's great because it's funny, subversive, knows that a lot of the time teenagers are dickheads, but mostly it's great because of Sid and Cassie. If it's not the most believable teenage romance on TV, it's easily the sweetest. It's telling that the most affecting thing about the final episode isn't the guy from About A Boy getting mowed down by a bus, but two kids holding hands. Now let's see them fuck it all up during season two.



Oh, who cares that most of the songs have nothing to do with the plot. And most of the time, the plot doesn't even need to be there. The first season of Flight Of The Conchords is a joy from start to finish. A parody of French music videos of the 60s? Yep. A stop motion kid's TV show starring a racist dragon and a badly burnt Albanian boy? Aye. A David Bowie tribute? There. You'll be hard pushed to find a more surreal, inventive and outright hilarious half hour of comedy on television. And it's made by HBO, but doesn't have someone's face being punched in by a pimp or something equally 'gritty' and 'realistic'. Amazing.



Unsurprisingly for a show about, ahem, herbal relaxants, Weeds actually moves kinda slow. Three years on, Nancy's just a little more seasoned. It's the sharp writing and fantastic cast that keep viewers coming back, though. This year, Nancy's 'bought' by a crack dealer, one of the Olsen twins gets slaggy, and, in an incredibly coincidental storyline, Agrestic burns down. But the real reason to watch Weeds is the dialogue- witty, razor sharp and filthier than almost everything else on TV, lines like "they say arson is a sexual crime. Couldn't you have just rubbed one out?" are enough to make most other TV writers reach for their joints.




BBC Three might be famous for Little Britain and (shudder) Two Pints Of Lager, however, shows like the blacker than black Pulling and Gavin and Stacy are expanding it's appeal beyond people who've just got back from Chinawhites. With a plot that could have been breathtakingly schmaltzy (girl and guy fall in love over internet, but live hundreds of miles apart), or (judging by the channel's comedy output thus far) just a series of bad sex jokes, is sort of what i imagine Judd Apatow and Richard Curtis making a sitcom would be like. There's sex jokes, however, they're coupled with a huge heart, and great scripts. It might be polemic to every other British sitcom of recent times, but Gavin and Stacy is just what the BBC need- an old fashioned, sweet rom-com.



Going out with neither a bang or a whimper, the final episodes of Veronica Mars reminded us why we fell in love with Vera in the first place. It wasn't like The OC's finale, where we were reassured that everything was alright, and nothing bad ever happened to anybody ever (although didn't Ryan look like a paedophile in the last scene?). T's were left uncrossed, and, refreshingly, everything wasn't okay. It didn't end with a kiss on a street, once again, Veronica was left alone, with things looking bleak. It's a good thing tears never show in the pouring rain.



Anybody who was unsure as to why Green Wing never quite gained mainstream recognition just needs to watch it's final episode. Joanna and Alan kill themselves, in one of the most oddly beautiful shots of the year. Guy continued to be a total cunt, and not of the smart arse Dr. House variety. And even though Mac and Caroline got married, he was probably still dying (unless you consider the alternate ending to be canonical). It doesn't matter, Victoria Pile wrapped it up perfectly. We don't need to know what happens afterwards, Caroline blissfully floating away said it all.



The best comic ensemble on television, there's not a weak link in 30 Rock. Tina Fey shines as Liz Lemon, one of the only female comic characters since Elaine Benes to make jokes rather than just be them. Sharp, cynical, with a healthy dose of surrealism (My Name Is Earl can be great, but it never had Prince Gerhardt), and featuring one of the decade's most all round brilliant comic creations (Kenneth the page, surely one of the most beloved characters on TV), it's a crime that hardly anybody watches it. But Seinfeld didn't really pull in viewers until season four. Let's hope that NBC has the balls to stick with it for a little longer.



We can argue for hours of the relative merits of the British and American Offices, but one thing is undeniable- there's no way that Gervais and Merchant's version would have sustained four seasons and been as fantastic as the American Office is. Nor could it have made an episode as beautifully tender and funny as Money. And if you think we'd care that much for Tim and Dawn after they got together, you're sorely mistaken. Maybe making the characters more well rounded, and well, nicer means that it's not as dark as the original, but i'd take Dunder Mifflin over Wernham Hogg any day.



Surely shows aren't supposed to get better over time? Well maybe you can peak around third season, but actually improving over a whole decade seems impossible, no? Perhaps Matt and Trey weren't paying attention when they were told to get worse with age, whatever the reason was, in it's eleventh season, South Park is funnier, smarter and more subversive than ever. The first half of the season is the funniest, dealing with race relations, sexuality, and a nuclear weapon being implanted in Hilary Clinton's vagina, but the season's (and perhaps the show's) finest moment is Imaginationland, a trilogy of episodes filled with more brilliant moments than every episode of American Dad combined. Long may South Park remain in rude health.



Pushing Daises is amazing for more reasons than i can list on one blog. But the show's brilliance is perhaps exemplified by Lily and Vivian. On the surface, they're cartoon characters, kooky aunts, one's nasty, one's nice. BFD, right? But when Vivian picks up a postcard from Chuck, and both she and Lily realise that she's never coming home, it's a more affecting moment than the hundreds of identikit relatives on CSI being told their loved ones where put in a blender or something. Essentially a crime procedural by Roald Dahl, Pushing Daisies is tinged with loss, sadness and longing. It's also the sweetest love story on television, and funnier than most comedies to boot. It's strangely fitting that a show about death should be so joyfully life affirming.