“Good morrow! I’m Henry VIII, who you might recognise from such bangers as ‘Pasttime With Good Company’ and a goth-metal remix of ‘Greensleeves’ that appeared on Now That’s What I Call Antidisestablishmentarianism vol. 6!. However unlike young Mr Skrillex the only EDM I’m interested is Edward de Mortimer, who led a rebellion against my great-great-uncle-once-removed in 1403. It’s a good thing Wikipedia won’t be invented for another half a millennium so you can’t fact check that!”
Indeed, Henry! But one thing you can check out without reference to online encylopedias is the next part of our top 40 countdown!
30. Marina & The Diamonds – Primadonna (Youtube)
This video features Marina standing on a stepladder in alarmingly high heels in order to pluck an orange from a tree. Your friendly Freaky Trigger Healthy & Safety Correspondents do not recommend attempting this at home.
29. Miguel – Adorn (Youtube)
Miguel is a Smooth Dude who is 100% confident that he can sing his way into your pants. YES, YOUR PANTS. There’s a bit of ‘Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart’ going on here so in my case he might well succeed.
28. Royal-T ft. Ruby Lee Ryder – You’re Saved (Youtube)
New to me, this one – it’s drum’n’bass with a Breathy Female Vocal from the Rinse FM dudes, but is pleasingly different enough from Katy B to make me very optimistic about the whole business.
27. Saint Etienne – Popular (Youtube)
Aw dudes, we’re BLUSHING. But it’s undeniably a banger and I am very chuffed to be mentioned on a song with a BPM over 120. Well done everyone!
26. Fuse ODG ft. Tiffany – Azonto (Youtube)
I first heard this on New Year’s Eve and I learned the dance WAY quicker than I did for Gangnam Style.
25. T-Ara – Lovey-Dovey (Youtube)
Perky K-vworp from a girl-group containing N women where N is a member of the set of natural numbers that can only be enumerated as a surjective partial mapping from the set of natural numbers to S where every element of S is the image of at least one natural number. Video contains zombies.
24. Orange Caramel – Lipstick (Youtube)
A completely different K-vworp girl-group! These ones can be safely mapped to a subset of the Fibonacci primes and their song sounds a bit like We No Speak Americano.
23. Miguel – Do You.. (Youtube)
More from Mr Miguel and his quiff! I confess that for the last few months I have been singing “Do you like PUGS (MUGS/BUGS/JUGS)?” along to this. (I do indeed like pugs. And quiffs.)
22. D’Banj – Oliver Twist (Youtube)
Absolutely excellent for dancing to, one of the highlights of Now 82. YES, EIGHTY TWO. And there’s been another one released since then! Argh!
21. Cassie – King of Hearts (Youtube)
I still have a massive place in my affections for the first Cassie album, and she’s since managed to hang on to that subtlety of tone that stops her becoming foghorn Rihanna or anonymous Cheryl. Also I LOVE her hairdo in this video.
I’ll be making a Youtube playlist of all the songs (where possible) at the end – apologies to anyone who can’t get the page to load due to the embeds. TECHNOLOGY, EH?
Lots I don’t know here, including the K-Pop selections – meanwhile “Do You…” got a vote from me, and if anything I expected to see it higher?
Great to see “Oliver Twist” there, one of the most enjoyable things in the charts this year. Cassie I’ve loved before but “King Of Hearts” didn’t make much impression on me – on the flimsier end of her stuff.
There was a more limited choice of Cassie tracks this year compared with the past. This one maybe got so high just because. That said, I voted for it!
also: Marina and her Diamonds is still a going concern??
Holy Meshugana! I voted three of these. Seriously, I didn’t expect to get any in the Top Fifty. Hope this doesn’t mean participation is way down from years past.
Yes, to sum up what Kat says, membership in T-ara is most definitely a variable, not a constant: they started with five, subtracted two and added three, but this was prior to most of their fame. Then they added one, and this year they added two more, one of whom stars in the “Day By Day” video where she has superpowers but we don’t know yet if those powers include singing, since no track with her has been released. Then midsummer the first one that was added in the fame era was sacked and K-pop fandom went into mass convulsions that are absolutely flabbergasting.
Don’t know yet if I’ve heard the Royal-T — he’s done some good work in the past, including with performers I’d otherwise found dubious. Will listen tonight.
Tiffany is now performing under her full name, Itz Tiffany; as a long-time member of the Itz family, I would like to send my greetings to our Ghanaian wing.
AZONTO AZONTO AZONTO AZONTO AZONTO AZONTO AZONTO AZONTO
This placing has made me inordinately happy.
Azonto – Cannot believe this is new to me. It has revolutionised my life and am now binging on azonto videos.