DCCXXII – December 2012
| Running total | Highest chart placing | The song and who did it |
|---|---|---|
7724 |
5 |
GIRL ON FIRE Alicia Keys |
7725 |
2 |
SOMETHING NEW Girls Aloud |
7726 |
1 |
TROUBLEMAKER Olly Murs featuring Flo Rida |
7727 |
7 |
DIE YOUNG Ke$ha |
7728 |
8 |
TRY P!nk |
7729 |
4 |
STAY Rihanna featuring Mikky Ekko |
7730 |
1 |
SCREAM AND SHOUT will.i.am featuring Britney Spears |
7731 |
1 |
IMPOSSIBLE James Arthur |
7732 |
2 |
I KNEW YOU WERE TROUBLE Taylor Swift |
7733 |
1 |
HE AIN’T HEAVY, HE’S MY BROTHER Justice Collective |
I like Girl On Fire; Alicia Keys’s last two singles on the list have had really heavy drums on them – I wonder if she’s been listening to a lot of Phil Collins albums. Something New is technically an accurate title because it’s a new release from Girls Aloud, but it doesn’t sound particularly new. It’s not bad, but it could easily have been released as a Cheryl Cole featuring Girls Aloud single, such is her dominance. Troublemaker sounds like a song the Maroon 5 of 2004 wish they’d written, not that that’s a criticism; it’s actually pretty good.
Die Young really isn’t very good, to be honest.
Try’s good, though.
There’s a definite trend towards pop stars doing really, really stripped back songs – Stay has Rihanna and Mikky Ekko (a man clearly fond of the letter ‘k’) singing with only a piano for accompaniment and it works really well. Scream And Shout is ridiculous, not least because of Britney Spears’s terrible English accent, but sod it, I like it. X-Factor winner James Arthur mumbles his way through Shontelle’s Impossible; that said, that said, there have been far worse winner’s singles than this. Sounds like the production team actually made an effort here.
I don’t think the people behind I Knew You Were Trouble ever really worked out what they wanted the song to sound like. Is it a standard pop song? Is it a Pendulum soundalike? God alone knows, but they’ve tried both and it doesn’t really work. So the year ends with a charity single then, but considering how long it had taken to get the truth out (not The Sun’s interpretation of the phrase either) of what had happened at Hillsborough twenty-three years earlier it’s a worthy cause. The single raised money for various Hillsborough-related charities, and although it vanished almost as quickly as it arrived, the single got the coveted Christmas Number One spot and raised a lot of money, so well done all.
There you are, that’s 2012. As I said in November, a decent year, all told; what’s more, it did top 2011 after all. Let’s see what 2013 has to offer, yeah?