#can you imagine how i felt when stromae ended a chorus on that word? and in such a funny way???

[coquelicoq]

the frenchest sound out there? you might think it's the guttural r, or maybe one of the nasal vowels. but my money's on [œj]. i still remember being 14 and learning the word fauteuil for the first time. man, i was blown away. changed forever. not only does french encourage, nay, REQUIRE you to produce this sequence of sounds, it wants you to put it at the END of words?? incredible. magnifique. that's when i fell in love. that's when i knew the french language means business.

[johannesviii]

Top 12 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2013

The best year in a trio of awesome years for hits. So awesome, in fact, I had to leave several excellent songs out of the list, even with two additional slots, and limit the list to songs I actually put on my mp3 player at one point or another.

What’s that? People usually call it a bad year? Well screw them.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

The year I stopped working in Paris, found a job closer to home that finally made me feel helpful in the grand scheme of things, and I finally had more free time. Goodbye daily trains. I also went to some concerts! This never happened before.

2013: also the year when just about every band and artist I liked decided to make a good album. Except Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode made Delta Machine. It wasn’t great. But, uh, let’s see, Placebo made Loud Like Love (with the fantastic A Million Little Pieces), VNV Nation made Transnational, Daft Punk made Random Access Memories... Nine Inch Nails came back with Hesitation Marks, which is pretty great with a couple of fantastic songs. Lady Gaga made the vastly underrated ArtPop! Even Eminem made a pretty decent album! Eminem! In the year of our lord 2013! And The 1975 made their debut album. They would eventually become one of my favorite bands of the 2010s, but not yet, though. And Indochine redeemed themselves by releasing Black City Parade, their absolute best album of the decade.

However, despite Indochine’s excellent effort and the return of Nine Inch Nails, the album of the year, at least to me, was Kveikur by Sigur Rós. At that point, I had been following their stuff for ten years, and this album still blew my goddamn mind. It’s so heavy and dark and so different from what they had been doing since Agaetis Byrjun. It’s loud and textured and industrial and yet, there’s so much light above the dark. They out-NIN’ed Nine Inch Nails. There isn’t a single track I don’t love on this album. It’s their best one in my humble opinion.

As far as unelligible songs go, boy, where do I start. Uh. Copy of A and Came Back Haunted (Nine Inch Nails), certainly, A Million Little Pieces (Placebo) as I already mentioned, Memoria and College Boy (Indochine - I’m actually shocked they aren’t on the French top 100), Chocolate by The 1975, and most infuriating of all, Castle of Glass by Linkin Park, which is imho their best song of the 2010s. Oh well.

But there’s still a shit ton of stuff which was elligible but didn’t make the list. Here’s a lot of honorable mentions. There were like ten more of them initially, mind you.

Sirens Call (Cats On Trees) - You know how in just about every top ten post I’ve made so far, there’s a song where I’m like “if I had better taste this would be higher”? This is this song for 2013.

Don’t You Worry Child (Swedish House Mafia) - Catchy but borderline annoying. Still very good.

Counting Stars (One Republic) - This is so happy and catchy. More songs like this nowadays, please.

I Cry (Flo Rida) - Still elligible. Still great. Still not on the list.

Ho Hey (The Lumineers) - Same thing here, sadly.

Animals (Martin Garrix) - I called Bangarang from the previous list a perfect stim song, and this is in the same ballpark. Not as good, but great shapes and colors all around.

Berserk (Eminem) - That song has a lot of really bad lines, but also a lot of much needed energy, it’s a ton of fun, and I love the “say f█ck it before you kick the bucket�� part of the chorus. I was so glad to hear Eminem having fun again. Would certainly have made the list in a more mediocre year. Not the most infuriating thing I had to leave out of the list, though.

Radioactive (Imagine Dragons) - THIS IS IT THE APOCALYPSE OH WOHO no I don’t have anything intelligent to say, it’s just great.

Best Song Ever (One Direction) - This is my favorite song from that band. It might be because it sounds suspiciously like Baba O’Riley. If you think I’m gonna complain about people ripping off good songs, please check my entry about I Gotta Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas a few top 10s before this one.

Wait. Waiiit. What if the “best song ever” they can’t remember in the lyrics WAS Baba O’Riley?? Wouldn’t that be the best meta song ever? What do you think? I mean, that one could indeed claim the title of best song ever.

Get Lucky (Daft Punk) - I know. I know. But I couldn’t put it on the list. It’s not my favorite song from the album, it was overplayed, and even if it’s extremely good it stays roughly at the same level for the entirety of the song. I love it, but I had to draw the line somewhere and cut the list. I didn’t want to make another top 15.

Carry On (fun.) - This was the last cut from the list. It was a really painful one. Not my favorite song from them, but still very, very good.

There’s been lists where I had to put filler. If I had to put actual grades to them, some songs I put on some lists would get a 6/10 or even a 5/10 for really bad years (looking at you 1990). Sometimes, I had to put stuff I’d grade 7/10 as high as #3.

If I had to grade this 2013 list according to my personal taste in music, #12 would get an 8/10, #11 would get a 9/10, and everything in the top ten would either be a 9,5 or a 10. No joke. That’s how good that year was for hits.

Let’s go.

12 - My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light’Em Up) (Fall Out Boy)

US: #40 / FR: Not on the list

There you have it. Three songs from a band I consider pretentious asshats ended on my lists. Including this one, in a year where I decided to severely limit my options for songs. And at the time? I thought it was just an okay song, way too slow but okay. Not great. At all.

It took it about three whole years to grow on me, and it also took me a while to actually know what it was about, and as I said previously, framing is everything ; knowing this song basically said “we’re back, and we’ve changed, and you’re not gonna like it so you’re gonna feel betrayed and you’re gonna burn your old posters, and in the end you’re also gonna betray us” makes it a lot, lot better. I especially love the “Burn everything you love then burn the. ashes” line with the weird pause for emphasis.

It just goes stomp, stomp, stomp. It’s heavy. You can’t dance to it. You can’t even have fun while listening to it. But you can certainly stomp along, and feel angry, and, yes, betrayed, and three years after 2013, I certainly needed that kind of song. A lot. You know exactly why.

11 - Burn (Ellie Goulding)

US: Not on the list / FR: #54

I discovered Doctor Who at the very, very end of 2013, and for some reason I associate this song with Martha’s journey during the year that never was at the end of S3, trying to convince the entire Earth to fight back against the Master. That’s all I have to say about this song. It’s great.

10 - Instant Crush (Daft Punk ft Julian Casablancas)

US: Not on the list / FR: #26

So yep, Get Lucky isn’t my favorite song on Random Access Memories, and thank you French charts for allowing me to put this one on the list instead.

Like a ton of people, I couldn’t figure out what the chorus was, apart from a couple of isolated words, and that felt exactly like being 10 and trying to decipher songs with my limited English. And then I checked the lyrics, and they were mostly variations on “I don’t want to be alone” and they rhyme “go” with “go”, so, uh, nothing of value was lost that day. And it still sounds fantastic.

9 - Applause (Lady Gaga)

US: #37 / FR: #66

Yes, there’s some really stupid shit in the lyrics and the theme of the song itself isn’t particularly inspiring, but that chorus is a happy burst of fuzzy bright angular shapes, and it’s so energetic it feels like you could phase through walls by sheer force of will while listening to it. It would be even higher if the lyrics were better, I swear.

8 - Papaoutai (Stromae)

US: Not on the list / FR: #4

And the boss of cleverly written hit songs strikes again. Pretty sure that one, like Alors On Danse, is well known even if you don’t speak French. As I understand it, apparently French teachers like to use it in class. But yeah, just in case: it’s a song about his absent father. My favorite part:

Un jour ou l'autre on sera tous papas (One day or another we’ll be dads) Et d'un jour à l'autre, on aura disparu (And one day or the next, we’ll be gone) Serons-nous détestables? (Will we be despicable?) Serons-nous admirables? (Will we be admirable?) Des géniteurs ou des génies (Parents or geniuses) Dites-nous qui donne naissance aux irresponsables? (Tell us who birthes irresponsible people?) Ah, dites-nous qui, tiens (Ah, tell us who ; weird) Tout le monde sait comment on fait des bébés (Everybody knows how to make babies) Mais personne ne sait comment on fait des papas (But nobody knows how to make dads)

And it’s also horribly catchy. And it was kind of a meme here. It was everywhere. I’m surprised it wasn’t even higher than that on the French year end top 100.

7 - Underwater (Mika)

US: Not on the list / FR: #70

Why do I love this song so much even though I usually hate songs like that. This is the kind of romantic bullshit Robbie Williams does, and for the record I absolutely hate Angels, and Underwater even sounds a bit like Angels, and it also has the same kind of corny central metaphor. So. Why do I love Underwater again? How can I justify this? I’ve got no clue.

We don’t deserve Mika.

6 - I Need Your Love (Calvin Harris ft Ellie Goulding)

US: #56 / FR: #51

By now you must all be extremely tired of reading me describing songs in visual ways but this song is the sound equivalent of some sort of light show mixed with Dance Dance Revolution patterns. It’s incredibly kinetic and full of joyful, glittering energy, and I love it so goddamn much.

As a 90s kid who loved eurodance, I’m incredibly grateful this kind of music still exists and is still charting.

5 - Treasure (Bruno Mars)

US: #30 / FR: #23

Speaking of nostalgia. Well, not really, since I wasn’t born in the era this is trying to mimic, but still. I don’t have anything to say about this, apart maybe from the fact this is the song that finally made me like Bruno Mars.

4 - Hey Brother (Avicii)

US: Not on the list / FR: #18

I already mentioned how much I loved Avicii’s music when I briefly talked about Levels, and Hey Brother is even better. As you might know I have a little brother and as it is often the case with siblings we fought a bit but we also shared a lot of things, and games, and weird private jokes, and yeah that song can occasionally make me cry a fair bit if I’m being honest.

Also, it’s kind of my main theme song for Charley and C’rizz, so, yeah, it’s just another layer of Feelings(tm).

3 - I Will Wait (Mumford & Sons)

US: #52 / FR: Not on the list

As you might have noticed, there’s one genre that is conspicuously absent from my lists as far as the US hit songs are concerned, and that’s country. I’ve got nothing against country music, I just rarely find it visually interesting. Now I do like folk rock on the other hand, but its big era is long gone, and it’s quite rare to hear anything from it in the charts nowadays. I liked Ho Hey by the Lumineers, but I always thought it was a little bit too slow.

And then I found Babel by Mumford & Sons at the library, gave it a try, loved it, felt like discovering a modern band version of Bob Dylan with simpler lyrics, and this isn’t my favorite song on the album and it’s still at #3 on this list. Quality, man, just quality.

My favorite song from the album is Lover of the Light, by the way.

2 - Can’t Hold Us (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis)

US: #5 / FR: #8

Sometimes you need angry fight songs, sometimes you need energetic fight songs, and sometimes you need happy fight songs. And when something combines the last two, it’s like you caught a star in a Mario game and you’re f█cking unstoppable.

If Macklemore doesn’t get more hit songs at some point in the near future I’m gonna punch a wall.

1 - Roadgame (Kavinsky)

US: Not on the list / FR: #44

This song has no music video. It was still an enormous hit.

As you may recall, I already said once or twice that I liked to hang out at the disc store after class while I was in highschool and uni, and it still happened regularly after I started to work. Even nowadays, if I had a really, really bad day, there’s a good chance I’ll go there and spend at least an hour there just listening to stuff.

So here I was, one fine (actually bad) day, and this song was playing, and I was mesmerised, and for the first time ever, I felt the need to find a vendor and ask what was playing. I found one and the guy instantly beamed and went “oooooh I picked that album to play it in the store today! :D That’s Kavinsky, he’s great, here, have a listen” but it was already getting late so... I trusted him and basically bought the album blind.

Best decision ever. On top of being one of the best albums of the 2010s, OutRun is a concept album presented as if it was the soundtrack of a movie that never existed, about a young guy getting killed in a car crash in 1986 and somehow fusing with his car mentally and reappearing as some sort of technological zombie in 2006. And Roadgame is one of the best songs on the album if not the best. Well, my favorite song on it is actually Testarossa Autodrive, but you get my point.

I was like “there’s no way this is going to be big”, and I was dead wrong, thankfully. As a big fan of electronic music full of lights and flashes and colors but with dark overtones, I couldn’t be happier about this being one of the sounds of the year. Just fantastic stuff.

It’s 2020, man. Please drop that second album. We’re ready to have our minds blown all over again. Just do it.

Also, thank you random vendor from the disc store.

Next up: I have no idea why some people call 2014 a really bad year for hit songs tbh