A God-awful Small Affair

Thank you for enduring this countdown - there are only more to come I'm afraid. #20 - "Black Skinhead" - Kanye West I wouldn't mind another Marilyn Manson rip-off next year to be honest if they sounded as furious and lively as this. #19 - "You're Not the One" - Sky Ferreira Gorgeous 80s riffs, a soaring chorus and a general amalgamism of everything excellent about recent indie-pop music. #18 - "Closer" - Tegan and Sara I think this is probably the best chorus of the year. It makes doing the grocery shopping feel triumphant. #17 - "Recover" - CHVRCHES Basically this whole teens-thing is full of all my "choruses of the year" before I settle down and get all deep and pretentious for my top ten, yo. #16 - "It All Feels Right" - Washed Out I just can't put into words how well this style of music just clicks with me and turns me into a gooey, reclining mess. #15 - "Q.U.E.E.N. (feat. Er

    If I'm honest, there haven't been many albums this year that have stood out in record stores or made me stroke my iPod with small fits of affection - out of their sheer appearance, at least. Here, I compile ten that're at least "quite pretty" and OH BOY ARE THEY. #10 - "Nothing Was the Same" - Drake I didn't go much on the album itself, with the exception of a few singles, but the way in which this double-whammy was parodied on t'internet was mildly amusing.   #9 - "Old" - Danny Brown Is it a dig at Macklemore's Heist record? Is it a Napoleon reference? Either way, it's pretty b old ha ha ha ha hahaha hahaha ha. #8 - "Paracosm" - Washed Out It's a matter of time before this pattern is on a T-shirt I buy, I suppose. #7 - "Long.Live.A$AP" - A$AP Rocky Don't really consider myself a fan of him after how drawn out his breakthrough was and how 'm

3 albums in and I'm probably one of the last ten people on Earth that hasn't got whipped into a frenzy over the work of Drake. As such, I'm a little taken aback when the man - commonly mocked by online communities for being too soft and emotional to be in the game he's in - makes claims such as that at the start of 2011's Take Care : "I think I killed everybody in the game last year, man". Really? Because when I think of 2010 I think of a lot of things (oh, just that little thing called My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , for example) other than Drake.  I listened to Take Care back then but forgot to review it - I wasn't that blown away, but I enjoyed it. I did feel that the samples - or indeed covers, in the case of the title track, relied a little too heavily on the source material and as such didn't quite make an impression on me as something new; hopefully Nothing Was the Same is a mantra this album adheres to. Indeed, the vocal war