Best Single 25-18

25) My Love (Feat. T.I.) - Justin Timberlake - Futuresex/Lovesounds - 2006


Production so entrancing only Timbaland himself could top it, this is JT's best song by far retaining everything that made him one of the best male artists of the decade. Intricate choreography comes as standard.


UK Chart Position - 2

24) In My Arms - Kylie Minogue - X - 2008


I nearly put Kylie's Confide in Me here in this place, but In My Arms sees the Aussie at her peak, danceable, hypnotic and totally euphoric. Calvin Harris' best production to date.


UK Chart Position - 10

23) Sorry - Madonna - Confessions on a Dancefloor - 2006


The best track on one of my favourite albums, the 'I heard it all before' hook begs for you to join Madge on the dancefloor. One of the first songs to make me realise how amazing a middle 8 can be.


UK Chart Position - 1

22) Diamonds From Sierra Leone - Kanye West - Late Registration - 2006


When you sample the legend that is Shirley Bassey, you need to have a stellar song to back you up. Luckily for Kanye he ended up writing the best lyrics of his career. An epic track.


UK Chart Position - 8

21) Me Against The Music (Feat Madonna) - Britney Spears - 2003


The dance routine in the video for Me Against The Music is my favourite in any Britney video. Maybe part of the reason I love her energetic hook up with the Queen of Pop so much.

UK Chart Position - 2

20) Sweet Dreams - Beyoncé - I Am Sasha Fierce - 2009

Queen B's standout vocal moment appears in Sweet Dreams. The 'My guilty pleasure...' section being the best thing she has done since those Crazy In Love horns first began.

UK Chart Position - 5

19) Greatest Day - Take That- The Circus - 2008

Greatest Day makes me feel like I'm home, those opening guitar twangs being enough to make me feel safe with the song about to play. Take That at their best, especially when sung by them live.


UK Chart Position - 1

18) Jesus Walks - Kanye West - The College Dropout - 2004

Kanye's most important record, Jesus Walks questions why rappers can talk about Guns and Hoes and yet not about God. A powerful song, with a powerful message.


UK Chart Position - 16

Top 10 Singles - #9

Crazy In Love (Feat. Jay-Z) - Beyoncé - Dangerously In Love - 2003

A song that needs no introduction, Crazy In Love is the highlight of Queen B's long career. The brassy smash of an opening immediately grabs the listeners ear, and only improves as the song continues. The 'Oh Oh' dance hook went on to become a staple of not just Beyoncé, but every RnB Diva to follow. It's sassy, explosive, infectious and incredibly danceable, proved by B herself in the incredible video. Even hubby to be Jay-Z delivers one of the best Middle 8 raps of his career. Crazy In Love set the genre standard and few have bettered Beyoncé's classic.

UK Chart Position - 1
Best Lyric - 'You Ready?'

The Problem with Bonus Tracks Pt. 2

It has been nearly 2 months since I last complained about bonus tracks, so the part 2 I had planned to write just after this article is long overdue.


This time my focus is on those artists who release singles labelled as Bonus Tracks on their albums. The artist most recently doing this is Nicki Minaj, the Rap Diva turned Pop Starlet who has release 2 Bonus tracks from her album Pink Friday as Singles. Super Bass, her current and soon to be first top ten single, has become one of my favourite Minaj songs, but you can only find it on the deluxe version of her album. In an iTunes era where things like deluxe edition don't mean much, this could seem to be a problem, but it frustrates me when artists release both version of the album simultaneously, then start releasing songs in this way.

Her previous UK single, Girls Fall Like Dominoes was even more of a tricky release, with this song only appearing on the iTunes deluxe package of the album. It was a minor hit, the lack of a video proving how essential it is to have one in the current market.

This opens up an even bigger question, and the other artist I want to focus on here is Beyoncé. As I mentioned last time, B has some serious issues with things like bonus tracks and the overall order of tracks on her albums. All 4 albums have been badly constructed, Bday and Sasha Fierce having revised  versions to fix this. I expect her new record 4 will have the same eventually, I've already made my own perfect album from the tracks.

Speaking of releasing bonus tracks though, the Sasha Fierce era for Beyoncé saw her release what seemed like 100 singles, 2 of which were only available on the deluxe edition of the original album. Her unorthodox way of adding 6 extra tracks to a 10 song CD being ridiculous in the first place.

All of this said, I have a lot of love for both Nicki and Beyoncé. Be glad I chose Bonus tracks as my rant of choice too. If I'd have mentioned a certain Brit school graduate currently sitting atop the album chart this article would have been about ten thousand words long!

The Problem with Bonus Tracks Pt. 1

If you have paid attention to my twitter feed for the past few weeks, you will know exactly what album I have on repeat. Lady GaGa is back, and with an album that backs up at least some of her self hype. But there is one thing that erks me about Born This Way, probably the best album of 2011 so far, and that thing is the 'Special Edition' and its Bonus Tracks.

I have always had a thing against bonus tracks. The idea that including extra tracks that weren't good enough to make the final cut will somehow make your product more desirable is just backwards logic. It is true though that on occasion such extra tracks can be so good that you wonder why they were cut in the first place. either way, I understand that extra content isn't going away, especially with so many deluxe editions of albums being released to make up for lost album sales. There is a time and a place for Bonus Tracks, which is most definitely after the last 'main' track has finished.

This leads me onto the issue in hand, where Lady GaGa, in an attempt to make both versions of her album as special as each other, has integrated 3 extra tracks into Born This Way. At 14 tracks, the original wasn't short but worked extremely well as an album. Only one of the 3 new songs truly deserved to be included in the first place, Black Jesus + Amen Fashion being a much better fit than Bad Kids for example, the other two songs both ending up as some of the weakest tracks on the record.

It frustrates me when I compliment the album on working as a complete 'experience' when the artist herself goes against this by creating two completely different versions of Born This Way. Which version is the 'real' version? My iTunes is set up so that I separate the main album from a set of Bonus Tracks which can be heard in it's own 'album'. This set up is something I have done with Britney for example, who has one of the largest selection of 'bonus tracks' from each of her albums. Britney in particular has many brilliant songs that should have made the album in the first place, but they avoid the risk produced by those lesser tracks by placing everything at the end of the CD.

I've given the 'new' version of Born This Way a few listens but I'm yet to decide whether I'm going to keep the bonus tracks in with the rest. Beyoncé is known for getting her album tracklists drastically wrong, just one look at the 'deluxe' version of I Am Sasha Fierce is all you need to see that, so expect another twitter rant once 4 comes along.