2007: 20-1

Everything, 20 through 1:

20. "Ice Box" - Omarion
19. "Glamorous" - Fergie
18. "Like A Boy" - Ciara
17. "I'm A Flirt" - R Kelly
16. "I'm Like A Lawyer" - Fall Out Boy
15. "Do It" - Nelly Furtado
14. "Beautiful Girls" - Sean Kingston
13. "Tattoo" - Jordin Sparks
12. "Good Life" - Kanye West
11. "Umbrella" - Rihanna
10. "Makes Me Wonder" - Maroon 5
9. "Apologize" - Timbaland
8. "Give It To Me" - Timbaland
7. "LoveStoned" - Justin Timberlake
6. "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs" - Fall Out Boy
5. "The Way I Are" - Timbaland
4. "I Get Money" - 50 Cent
3. "Stronger" - Kanye West
2. "Last Night" - P Diddy
1. "Say It Right" - Nelly Furtado

Artist of the Year: Timbaland
Producer of the Year: Timbaland

2007: #1 - "Say It Right"

In the ambiguous, mysterious and irresistibly catchy "Say It Right", Nelly Furtado sneaks up on you, whispers into your ear, asks you to stay, then vanishes into the night without warning. When we first heard this, we were caught off guard and bowled over, but it still has the same hauntingly memorable quality to it, nearly three years later; perhaps only "Poker Face" and one other song this decade can boast its mix of superior melody and playful mystery.

2007: 20-2

Recap time... Guess the #1 song and win a CD! Ayo!

20. "Ice Box" - Omarion
19. "Glamorous" - Fergie
18. "Like A Boy" - Ciara
17. "I'm A Flirt" - R Kelly
16. "I'm Like A Lawyer" - Fall Out Boy
15. "Do It" - Nelly Furtado
14. "Beautiful Girls" - Sean Kingston
13. "Tattoo" - Jordin Sparks
12. "Good Life" - Kanye West
11. "Umbrella" - Rihanna
10. "Makes Me Wonder" - Maroon 5
9. "Apologize" - Timbaland
8. "Give It To Me" - Timbaland
7. "LoveStoned" - Justin Timberlake
6. "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs" - Fall Out Boy
5. "The Way I Are" - Timbaland
4. "I Get Money" - 50 Cent
3. "Stronger" - Kanye West
2. "Last Night" - P Diddy

2007: #2 - "Last Night"

We have definitely gotten shit for liking this song as much as we do, but that won't stop us from putting at #2 for 2007.

Puffy, who hadn't produced anything really worth hearing since he was called Sean Combs well over a decade ago, reinvents himself as a stylishly retro, electronic-pop rapper/singer/brooder, nearly two years before Kanye or Kid Cudi made huge splashes doing so. And by combining eerie video game synths with a Prince sample that's not too obvious, he avoids the usual knock that he just raps (lamely) over old songs. He can't sing either, but Keyshia Cole can, and she nearly makes this song her own on her larger-than-life pre-choruses.

But the chorus, which Diddy ingeniously uses to kick off the song (a dumb trick, sure, but it's uncommon enough to stand out), also shines. He sings on it, in a multi-tracked vocal, and it could be argued, like with Kanye on 808s and Heartbreak, that the off-pitch singing mars the track, making the melodies non-existent. But we thought Puffy was able to use his poor singing to his advantage; he sounds wounded and real for the first time, and some of the awkwardness and pitchiness seems perfectly planned, as if a well-performed version of the song wouldn't be as melodically interesting.

We may be alone in this, but we love this song.

2007: #3 - "Stronger"

When we first heard "Stronger", the Daft Punk-sampling electro-pop single off Kanye West's excellent Graduation, we thought it was the exact opposite of catchy and memorable, and wondered if we'd ever want to hear it again, not to mention if it would last a week or two on radio playlists. But like some kind of festering infectious sore, it grew on us like possibly no other song in history.

Kanye's awkward rhymes and sub-Diddy flow were held up by the beat - spiky keyboard and drum machine, loud reverb and of course the modulated vocal hook - and those weak raps eventually transformed into the purest distillation of Kanye that we had heard on record to that point.

The bridge where, amidst the starkness of those minor chord keyboard stabs, he effortlessly interacts with the sample - a technique that it seems only he has embraced, but somehow, for us, seems like such an easy route to awesomeness - is pure bliss.

2007: #4 - "I Get Money"

Despite using a sample from a 20 year-old hip hop standard, and subsequently sounding decidedly (and purposefully) retro, 50 Cent had never sounded as relevant or inspired as he did on "I Get Money".

Where some songs are the sample - like Cassidy's "I'm A Hustla" (a fine song, but nothing next to this) - "I Get Money" works itself around the hook and makes its point on its own merits. It's hard to decide what's more menacing about it - the whirring, dizzying keyboard hum that appears after the first measure and doesn't let up; the massive bass drum that kicks in at the same time; or the relentless Fifty himself, who boasts:

"Yeah I smell like the vault
I used to sell dope
I did play the block
Now I play on boats
In the south of France
Baby, St. Tropez
Get a tan? I'm already black
Rich? I'm already that
Gangsta, get a gat
Hit a head in a hat
Call that a riddle rap
Shit, fuck the chitter-chat
I'm the baker, I bake the bread
The barber, I cut ya head
The marksman, I spray the lead
I blood clot, chop ya leg

Do not fuck with the kid"

He even has a new catchphrase to replace "It's your birthday", finally. ("I run New York!")

In a crowded field, he hits #4 for 2007, but in any other year this is easily a #1 or 2 song.

2007: #5 - "The Way I Are"

On the hypnotic yet ultra-shiny pop-trance hit "The Way I Are", Timbaland extrapolates the synth part of mid-80s dance classic "Push It" (personally, I'm not a huge fan, but it's a cool hook), twists it around and creates one of the best Madonna-esque club-pop songs since Madonna stopped writing them in the mid-80s. It's a shame he couldn't have saved this one for her, since his actual collabs with her and J.T. were pretty putrid. In any case, we could hear (and have heard) this one a million times and it would still retain its long-lasting appeal. Breathy female vocals, ping-ponging synths and silly robo-funk that would make Prince blush may seem like elements of a major disaster, an embarrassing foray into glossed-up trance music from a hip-hop/pop maestro, but Timbaland pulls it all together here.

2007: #6 - "Thnks fr th Mmrs"

After saturating the R&B airwaves in the late 80's and early 90's with his lush soft-soul productions, and then overexposing himself (amidst many copycats) and his sound in the mid-90's, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds popped up on Top 40 radio again in an unlikely place - "Thnks fr the Mmrs" by Fll t By.

He infused their chunky hook-laden mall-punk with the same mature, overdone instrumentation of his past works, and the band actually ended up sounding better than they ever had. Too bad this new sound also got co-opted by a whole slew of awful artists, this time not by faux-soul singers, but by faux-emo pop bands like Panic! At the Disco and All American Rejects, and even Kelly Clarkson and The Jonas Brothers.

Because of that, the whole thing seemed dated and passe before it was even 6 months old, so it's lost some luster in the last couple of years. But while the others sound like 4th rate punk crassly injected with lame, superficial "pop" cliches, this is actually sort of well done, and we stand by this song as a good example of why Fall Out Boy is head and shoulders above their imitators. With its dense production, hyper-bombastic choruses and idiotically paranoid lyrics, "Thnks fr the Mmrs" is kind of like if George Michael had done "Living On A Prayer", which to me is not a bad thing at all.

2007: #7 - "LoveStoned"

People tend to rave about the shimmery interlude part (oooh look gtrz omg), and it's cool and all, but we love "LoveStoned" more for its dance-funk first half, where Justin out-sexies "Sexyback" and rocks "Rock Your Body" right to the ground.

And though "Rock Your Body" had far superior melodic hooks, it's on "LoveStoned" where Justin takes the funk groove of the earlier hit and outdoes himself on the Prince tip, going from flirty young dance goof to mysterious lothario with one falsetto swoop.

2007: #8 - "Give It To Me"

"Give It To Me", a cross between an early Madonna dance anthem and an easily digestible version of the stuff Timbaland used to do with Missy Elliott and Aaliyah, is the forgotten stepchild of Tim's most recent spate of #1 hits. While songs like "Apologize" and "The Way I Are" (and also any number of hits by guests Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake) continue to garner a fair amount of airplay on dance and Top 40 stations, this one seems to have been lost in the abyss of summer of '07 radio playlists.

That's a shame, as a massive yet snaky beat, and a stunning double tracked chorus laid down perfectly by the inimitable (for better or worse) Furtado, more than make up for some ludicrous rapping by the chart-topping trio. Though Timbaland has one good dis (the "I'm a producer and you just a piano man" line that almost started a producer feud between him and Scott Storch), the rhymes almost do it in; one can't help but think how much better this might have been with Missy Elliott, or even Jay-Z (think "Big Pimpin'" or "Dirt Off Your Shoulder"), singing over it.

2007: #9 - "Apologize"

The second time I heard this song, I got so excited that I did 70 in a 50 and got a $200 speeding ticket. Sure, it was a speed trap, but I won't deny being legitimately fired up. Not because it rocked hard or it was so interesting or anything like that. Obviously. The truth is, i'd spent the previous week or so listening to this "New Pop" new wave mix that had some "cool" post-punk stuff on it like Josef K, Orange Juice and Adam Ant, but also included songs by ABC, Scritti Politti, Human League, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Wham!, who, with their modernized glam-soul take on pop, helped define the movement known as New Romantic.

Now, it does have a more sober, precious post-90's faux-alternative Coldplay-style vibe to it, but with "Apologize", I think Timbaland and OneRepublic really captured that New Romantic ballad sound - and in their own way - better than anyone in recent memory. Whereas that someone like The Killers tends to shove the 80's influence down your throat, while simultaneously sounding nothing like an actual 80's synth-pop band, Timbaland totally gets it right.

2007: #10 - "Makes Me Wonder"

If their previous hit "This Love" was Maroon 5 attempting to, and failing miserably at, conjure up funky soul icons like James Brown and Stevie Wonder (seriously, that's what the band, and some critics, claimed) then "Makes Me Wonder", which fondly recalls Hall & Oates and Justin Timberlake, is the band successfully finding their true calling as white men imitating white men imitating black soul singers.

Regardless of what you think about this band, if you don't remember how good the hooks in this song are, go back and listen to it again. The main riff and the verse are a little sketchy, so it does take a little long to truly get going, but we count about 4 or 5 really catchy chorus and pre-chorus hooks that all rank near the top of the list for 2007.

It's not original in any way, and, yes, even the melodies we're raving about have a familiar feel to them, as if they stole them all from other places and just mashed them together. But that doesn't mean it isn't a good song.

2007: 20-11

20. "Ice Box" - Omarion
19. "Glamorous" - Fergie
18. "Like A Boy" - Ciara
17. "I'm A Flirt" - R Kelly
16. "I'm Like A Lawyer" - Fall Out Boy
15. "Do It" - Nelly Furtado
14. "Beautiful Girls" - Sean Kingston
13. "Tattoo" - Jordin Sparks
12. "Good Life" - Kanye West
11. "Umbrella" - Rihanna

"2007"

Glitchy and retro -
(90's style) - R&B
Meant for Aaliyah?

Near tolerable
Lite-rap from the annoying
Dutchess of Orchid

Ciara plumbs her
Lyrical depth, but the beats
Used to be better

Echoing Elton,
Kells states the obvious and
Warns ladies' fellas

We feel guilty for
Liking this band but this sounds
Like good power pop

Partying with her
Sounds like a good time at least
If you go by this

Suicide was a
Summery anthem's catch phrase
Via "Stand By Me"

Dumb lyrics cannot
Take away from the fact that
This is catchy shit

There's some "P.Y.T.",
grandmama in the bridge, and
T-Pain's best assist

You can stand under
My umb-er-ella ella
Ella ay ay ay