2011 will go down as the year that dance music partied its way up the charts and dubstep became the new disco. But some of Billboard’s year-end chart toppers failed to impress as much as other pop tunes did. Tune in Saturday to see the tracks listed as this year’s brightest and best.

1. ‘Grenade’ by Bruno Mars (No. 6)

And you thought only girls could be divas. Ukulele-toting Mars delivered a downright moping performance on ‘Grenade,’ a gloomy piano ballad. Mars tries to sound sincere and lovesick on a gaudy confessional of a chorus, but he comes off as deranged and hopeless. As a character study of a guy who promises to die for his girlfriend in about 30 different ways, it’s fascinating. As a brooding, whiny pop song, it’s just plain dull.

2. ‘We R Who We R’ by Ke$ha (No. 30)

Ke$ha came into the year as the life of the party, sing-talking her way into listeners’ hearts with boozy bravado and a hefty diet of auto-tune. But the sleazy Taylor Swift clone sounds hungover on the sloppy ‘We R Who We R.’ Behind the track’s bleating synthesizer and stuttered vocals lies a glittery mess of a performer whose party-hard persona is wearing thin. Instead of leaving the party gracefully, Ke$ha is ending 2011 by stumbling out the door and passing out in the dumpster.

3. ‘Sexy and I Know It’ by LMFAO (No. 57)

If only ‘Party Rock Anthem’ was the swan song for the dynamic duo of pop-rock parody. ‘Sexy and I Know It’ scrapes the bottom of the barrel of the hip-hop group’s repertoire, banking on bad jokes and even worse instrumentals. The parody is painfully transparent — not even the raunchy trio behind The Lonely Island would smirk at the Speedo-heavy music video. And the chorus ‘Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, yeah’ is a far cry from the shuffle-worthy techno groove from ‘Party Rock Anthem.’ You’ve had your fun, LMFAO. Now the joke’s on you, and it’s not even a funny one anymore.

4. ‘S&M’ by Rihanna (No. 12)

Rihanna’s ode to bedroom fantasies lacks any substance besides shock value. She managed to infuse her lack of subtlety from ‘Rude Boy’ and insufferable shamelessness from ‘SOS’ into this one song. Apart from its sexually explicit lyrics, ‘S&M’ struggles with a ho-hum dance-pop beat and lackadaisical lyrics. Even some of the diva’s most staunch supporters shied away from the most blatant pickup lines on a track since Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Relax.’ The only bondage the pop star is stuck in now is her yelping vocals and her inability to pen a song that doesn’t stick to shock value to soar.

5. ‘If I Die Young’ by The Band Perry (No. 35)

Country music is meant to be sad. Not Taylor Swift’s definition of sad, which usually means being dumped by a cute boy, but drop-dead depressing. All that doom and gloom should stay off of Top 40 Radio, a rule that The Band Perry defiantly shattered this year. Everything from the morose acoustic guitar to Kimberly Perry’s apathetic delivery reeks of bored heartache. What’s worse than a song about a young girl’s funeral? A song about a young girl’s funeral with a fiddle.

ervanrhe@syr.edu

Published on December 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Erik: ervanrhe@syr.edu | @therealvandyman