The year’s most memorable synthesizer line, lashings of brass, cymbals and drums, a giant psych-pop of a tune, a lyric that seemed both to satirise and aspire to the rock-star lifestyle, and a wonderfully shambolic payoff (“I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah!’ ”): the American duo reminded us just how classic but cussedly individual singles should be made.
2 GRAFTON STREET — Dido
No more coffee-table music for Dido. Her album Safe Trip Home was a giant step forward, and Grafton Street — a song about the death of her father — was its sad but beautiful core. Empathetic keyboards by Brian Eno and an unlikely recorder solo frame the acceptance of loss: “Nothing’s left that’s safe here now, / Nothing will bring you home, / Nothing can bring us the peace / We had in Grafton Street.”
3 WEATHER TO FLY — Elbow
Inducing festival audiences to cry, the Mercury judges to make good past mistakes and — hallelujah — the British public finally to reach for their wallets, the Bury quintet showed on this sublime, rumbling Seldom Seen Kid standout that when it comes to combining unblinking lyrics with emotionally electrifying dynamics, nobody does it better.
4 ALL I NEED — Al Green
With a stunning band driven by the Roots’ ?uestlove on drums, Green recaptures his finest form. This unhurried groove is decorated by delicate guitar lines from Spanky Alford, subtle touches from the Dap-Kings Horns and Adam Blackstone’s yearning bass. A lot of stuff gets called “soul” these days — here’s the real deal.
5 UNFORGETTABLE SEASON — Cut Copy
“Australian indie-electronic trio,” says Cut Copy’s AMG entry. Funny, that sounds like a wall of guitar. And one of the year’s greatest bass lines. Bar one wheezing synth, the instruments that underpin Dan Whitford’s searing vocal about romantic misunderstanding, loss and nostalgia are rock staples. Wielded by indie-electronic geniuses.
6 SINGLE LADIES (PUT A RING ON IT) — Beyoncé
Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce album was a mixed bag, but once you’d waded through the dreary ballads, you were rewarded with this superbly produced and admirably direct piece of advice to the playas.
7 AMERICAN BOY — Estelle featuring Kanye West
Four years after missing out on her expected British breakthrough, Estelle Swaray re-emerged in New York, packing a formidable pop-soul punch in the company of Kanye West, just one of many American boys queuing up to work with her. This fabulous song provided her with her first No 1.
8 WHEN THEY COME TO MURDER ME — Black Francis
The Pixies may have split up again, but the artist formerly known as Frank Black has reconnected with the fierce, weird creativity that sparked his old band’s best songs. Reclaiming the “Black Francis” name is entirely appropriate for this twisted gem.
9 SEE THESE BONES — Nada Surf
The New York power-pop trio came up with 2008’s most overpoweringly propulsive and gloriously euphoric song. If you aren’t shaken, stirred and devastated by this, you need help. Fast.
10 LOUISE — Tony Christie
When you think of the trashy cash-ins Christie could have made after Amarillo’s success, his decision to turn to the songwriters of his hometown for his fine Made in Sheffield album is to be applauded. This stripped-down rethinking of the Human League classic is eerily wonderful. Guy Barker’s trumpet solo will haunt you.
11 WAVING FLAGS — British Sea Power
An open invitation to eastern European workers to surge through our customs controls, stimulate the economy and drink heroically. “Are you of legal drinking age?” asked BSP, “On minimum wage? Well, welcome in from across the Vistula.” And an amazing tune.
12 MAKE MY DAY — Common
Fans of Gnarls Barkley disappointed with their second album can turn instead to this track, on which Common’s elegantly crafted rap is augmented by a pretty hook from Cee-Lo and a thumping beat courtesy of Mr DJ. It would have been a great summer soundtrack, if it hadn’t come out in December.
13 DUSK TILL DAWN — Ladyhawke
A great big Frankie Says Relax of a bass line, the cool-as-a-cucumber, jaw-droppingly pop-savvy Pip Brown promising to “Bang, bang, bang on the wall, from dusk till dawn” — you get the overpowering sense that with a song this good as its soundtrack, that would be a party you’d kill to attend.
14 SUN IS SHINING — The Fireman
The latest collaboration between Paul McCartney and Youth invokes the “anything goes” spirit of the White Album, while never forgetting that McCartney’s specialist subject is the Melodic Pop Song. If the lovely chorus doesn’t get you, the infectious enthusiasm in the vocal will.
15 I CAN’T STAY — The Killers
For a synth-pop band, the Killers did a mighty poor job of sticking to the script here. They veered thrillingly off-menu, with harp, sax, castanets, a steel band and bossa nova beats replacing electro-disco ones, and one of Brandon Flowers’s most beautiful melodies and personal lyrics.
16 LIKED YOU BETTER BEFORE — Little Jackie
Just think Macy Gray, back when she was good. This friendly slice of pop R&B challenges Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain for lyrical complexity: “I liked you better before you knew me.” Huh?
17 BRUISES — Chairlift
Many found this Young Folks-for-2008 debut single by the Brooklyn band maddeningly arch, and its use in an iPod ad didn’t help. Less uptight folk just listened to its child-simple bass, cheap drum-machine beats and girl-boy two-hander lyrics, and thought: “I want to hate this, but I’m in love.”
18 DADDY’S GONE — Glasvegas
The lyrics, about a father walking out, are a mix of denial and defiance — “I won’t be the lonely one / Sitting on my own and sad / A 50-year-old/ Reminiscing what I had” — but the music, emulating Spector’s Wall of Sound, is glorious.
19 DID YOU MISS ME — Lindsey Buckingham
Presumably he can’t still be singing about Stevie after all these years? Whoever this is about, it’s a classic Buckingham double-sider: it glides along on a sea of pop perfection and only later begins to seem the work of a tormented obsessive.
20 CALL ME — Merz
There are few more exquisite sounds in modern music than when Merz starts layering his voice, and this reworking of the You’ve Got a Friend theme — “When your grip on life has all but gone / Call me and I’ll come” — allows him to build to a huge layered chorus, then cap that with the dreamiest of lingering fade-outs
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From : http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5364829.ece?token=null&offset=36&page=4
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THAT RIHANNA REIGN JUST WON'T LET UP
