The HYG Singles Of 2007

10) Unklemjam - What Am I Fighting For?
Sounding for all the world as if it had been beamed to this planet from the year 3000, and with a video costing upwards of four million pounds, you’d have expected this peerless robopop to have fared better in the charts, wouldn’t you? Yes you would.

9) Calvin Harris - Acceptable In The 80s
Doing significantly better saleswise was this 1980s/2080s crossover from Scottish producer (NOT popstar, as he kept reminding us) Calvin Harris. Bubbling away like musical Fizz Wiz, this smash soundtracked many a neon-clad night out.

8) Architecture In Helsinki - Heart It Races
Or, what happens when a bunch of Australians throw a microphone around a kitchen and ‘come up trumps‘. ‘Heart It Races’: part steel-drum symphony, part Muppet chorus whimsy; wholly unique, sunshine-specked fantasy.

7) Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
Not just one of this year’s best singles, but probably one of the century’s best by a solo female artist. Wino’s painful descent into personal hell was accompanied by this, a mournfully bleak soul epic so heartbreaking it sliced through even the most hardened of aortas like a cheesewire cello string.

6) Kate Nash - Foundations
After a wobbly (read: bloody awful) start to the year with ‘Caroline Is A Victim’, K-Na turned it all around by releasing the decade’s definitive break-up anthem. Critics scorned Kate’s mockney couplets (“bittah/fittah”), confusing ubiquity for a lack of class. The fact is, this song says more about the disintegration of a relationship than a million Dear Deirdres ever could.

5) MIA - Boyz
Punching out of speakers like a cross between a carefully-orchestrated Bollywood musical and a battle royale in a musical instrument shop, ‘Boyz’ cemented MIA’s status as the world’s most colourful, creative and cutting-edge solo star. Aided and abetted by co-producer Switch, Ms. Arulpragasam came up with the year’s most devastating dancefloor assault, and how we thanked her for it.

4) Dragonette - Take It Like A Man
‘Take It Like A Man’ - as with most Dragonette songs - starts out as a seductively sexy slow groove, with bass guitar and breathy vocals combining to set the tone. From there, the track quickly ascends into a playfully-teasing bridge, followed by - BANG - a massive eruption of melody that splashes great big explosions of chorus all over your ears. A musical orgasm if ever there was one, that this song didn’t peak at number one is a crime.

3) Groove Armada - Song For Mutya (Out Of Control)
Groove Armada struck gold with ’SFM (OOC)’, another production unafraid to embrace the power of the Giant Fucking Chorus. It was exactly the sort of huge-sounding, balls-out, ‘BLOODY WELL LOOK AT ME, WILL YOU?’ number that Mutya should have been releasing by the bucketload. Sadly she thought otherwise, and by the time the shockingly-underwhelming video came about, not many people cared. Sob.

2) Rihanna - Umbrella
What can be said about this tune that hasn’t already been said? Probably that it is rubbish, but since it is not rubbish, why anyone would say that is beyond us. ‘Umbrella’ was 2007’s ‘Crazy’, but better. The intro alone sent people into fits of teary-eyed glee. A timeless tribute to the beauty of friendship and everlasting love, it also birthed the year’s craziest dancefloor move: ladies whipping out their rain-based accessories for a mid-chorus twirl. Amazing.

1) Robyn - With Every Heartbeat
Great pop music moves you not only to the dancefloor but also deep within your soul. It makes you smile. It makes you cry. It makes you feel warm inside and afraid of nothing. It can break your heart, or save your life.

To do all of these things at the same time, as ‘With Every Heartbeat’ - a cathedral-sized masterpiece that sounds like nothing else on planet Earth - does, is something rarely ever seen. That Robyn and Kleerup managed it with such understated and heartfelt elegance only serves to make it even more special.