Our top 50 singles of 2009

While we’ve given you plenty of editorial on our albums of the year (50-41, 40-31,30-21, 20-16, 15-11, 10-7. 6-4 3-1), we’re keeping it simple with this list of what releases our gaggle of writers collectively voted their singles of 2009. How did we reach this list, I hear you cry? May I hand over to our trusty friend, Excel Guru, who was last seen pre-ambling our top 50 albums end-of-year thingamejig:

“Everyone sent in a top 10 list and the 50 singles with the most nominations were collected; tie-breaks were decided by how high up those lists the songs were. Then everyone chose 10 ordered singles from the list of 50 and they were ranked using the same criteria as the album poll.”

Make no mistake either; these were all released as singles and not just hand-picked as our writers’ favourite tracks from albums. And it’s interesting to note that of these 50, 28 were from long-players (or not from LPs at all) that didn’t feature in our top 50 albums of the year, chosen by the very same gaggle of writers.

The radio-friendliness/commercial success of many of these singles forms an interesting near-dichotomy with our albums synopsis too. Are we spoon-fed by different channels when it comes to singles? Or does that awful notion of ‘guilty pleasure’ prevail (the amount of justification for some of our writers including Lady GaGa in their list said it all – and that’s honest), where it’s somehow more permissible to enjoy a Dizzee Rascal one-track than an album?

Of course it could just be that these tracks are stand-outs, but I fear a greater sub-text even within our own ranks. We’ll continue to cover singles because without that, there’s a great fear that the early falling-in-love-with stage of discovering an artist will dilute entirely.

And on that contemplative note, here’s our list:

1       Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero
2       Grizzly Bear – Two Weeks
3       Bat For Lashes – Daniel
4       Wild Beasts – All The Kings Men
5       The Horrors – Sea Within A Sea
6       Animal Collective – My Girls
7       HEALTH – Die Slow
8       The XX – Islands
9       Animal Collective – Brother Sport
10      Arctic Monkeys – Cornerstone
11      The XX – Crystalised
12      Camera Obscura – French Navy
13      Phoenix – 1901
14      Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is In The Move
15      Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind
16      Casiokids – Verdens Störste Land / Fot I Hose
17      Blue Roses – I Am Leaving  / Moments Before Sleep
18      La Roux – In For The Kill (Skream’s Let’s Get Ravey Remix)
19      Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition
20      Lady Gaga – Paparazzi
21      The Big Pink – Velvet
22      Franz Ferdinand – Ulysses
23      Muse – Uprising
24      Future of The Left – Arming Eritrea
25      The Cribs – Cheat On Me
26      Dizzee Rascal – Bonkers
27      Lily Allen – The Fear
28      Kasabian – Underdog
29      Brand New – At The Bottom
30      Burial/Four Tet – Moth / Wolf Club
31      Girls – Lust For Life
32      Regina Spektor – Laughing With / Blue Lips
33      The Prodigy – Omen
34      Sunset Rubdown – Idiot Heart
35      The Big Pink – Dominos
36      Noisettes – Never Forget You
37      Joy Orbison – Hyph Mngo
38      tUnE-yArDs – Hatari
39      Emmy The Great – First Love
40      Pulled Apart By Horses – I Punched A Lion In The Throat
41      Patrick Wolf – Hard Times
42      The Maccabees – No Kind Words
43      Jay-Z feat. Rihanna & Kanye West – Run This Town
44      The Twilight Sad – I Became A Prostitute
45      Biffy Clyro – That Golden Rule
46      Darkstar – Aidy’s Girl is a Computer
47      Gold Panda – Quitters Raga
48      Editors – Papillon
49      O.Children – Dead Disco Dancer
50      Paramore – Decode

Here is a Spotify playlist featuring 41 of the 50 singles. Run along and have a listen, why don’t you.