A much longer time ago than it seems, my colleagues and I at Forth One would gather once a year to guest on my erstwhile colleague Mark Findlay’s review show “The Hit Factor”. There, somewhat indulgently, we’d all pick our ten favourite songs of the year gone by, and immediately head off to the pub after to continue the conversations. It wasn’t always easy, as pop music ten years ago tended to be just a bit rubbish: I’d have paid good money indeed to have just some of the records on this list available to play on my breakfast show at that time, but at the turn of the millennium it felt like we were stuck with the likes of S Club 7 and Steps, roaming the land like shiny-toothed stage school dinosaurs.

 

Anyway, “The Hit Factor” is now long gone, as indeed is Mark, now happily ensconced in London in a senior management role at one of the biggest radio groups in the country - where he gets to pick the tunes every day. So with that much missed annual treat in mind, and in no particular order, here’s a shamelessly subjective look back at 2012 in music. By the way, you can hear the choices by going to this playlist on Spotify.

 

 

Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe

 

Admittedly, coming third in Canadian Idol a million years ago and then doing nothing for the longest time seems like an unlikely prelude to writing and recording one of the most perfectly assembled pop record perhaps not just of 2012, but ever. However, it seems to have worked for Carly Rae Jepsen. Call Me Maybe appeared in the spring and, in the weirdest way imaginable, planted itself so firmly into the tastes of what feels like literally everyone I have ever met, that it sat at the top of the charts wherever it was released for far longer than any record had a right to do without ever getting tiring. It’s hard to imagine how it could have been more irresistible; perhaps if it had been bundled with a free basket of puppies and next week’s lottery numbers. But even then, only maybe.

 

Ne-Yo - Let Me Love You

 

Take Tulisa’s “Young” (forgive her, indeed, for what she has sung), turn it into an actual song, and give it to an actual singer, and you end up here. Inventively phrased by Ne-Yo, this soaring record leaves the world just a bit better every time it’s played - and that’ll continue happening for some time yet, I imagine.

 

Calvin Harris and Usher - Let’s Go

 

If you’d have got a good price betting on Carly Rae Jepsen having the biggest hit of the year, you’d also have had a decent coupon if you backed the frankly preposterous idea of a lanky shelf-stacker from Dumfries becoming one of the world’s most successful songwriter and producers. Calvin Harris’ new album is a ready made greatest hits, with collaborations with Example, Rihanna, Florence Welsh and many others having already been released as huge singles. This songs just edges them all, but frankly there’s not much in it.

 

Coldplay and Rihanna - Princess Of China

 

I hate TV chefs. Loathe them. I avoid them as diligently and enthusiastically as I'd avoid a nursing lioness, or a discarded syringe. However, one of these televisual food manipulators has punched through unbidden into my consciousness, largely I suspect by dint not only of his ubiquity, but his weirdness. It's the one who constantly appears in the press because he's created some new fusion dish that absolutely shouldn't work, but does. You know who I mean: the one who'd serve up griddled shavings of lobster shell in a Winalot jus, paired with a Twix risotto and a tea bag. Him. Anyway, putting Coldplay and Rihanna together is exactly the sort of thing that would have been on his list of ideas: mad and annoying on paper, wonderful and obvious on record. Nobody has the first clue what Chris Martin or Rihanna are actually on about, which maybe helps.

 

Ke$ha - Die Young

 

Ke$ha's first single Tik Tok came out a couple of years ago, and to date has sold over 12 million copies. That's more than any single, er, single, by The Beatles. This is absolutely as it should be. The first time I heard Tik Tok, I was stopped dead in my tracks by the sheer improbability of nobody having arranged words, notes and sounds in such a mathematically perfect way before. So towering an achievement was Tik Tok that all Ke$ha needed to - or indeed possibly could - do in the future, was essentially to make all of her subsequent records sound as much like Tik Tok as possible. Which brings us to Die Young, single one from album number three, and Tik Tok all over again. With some guitars, but not that you'd really notice or complain. She can't make records like this when she's 45, but frankly being 45 would be the only reason for her not to.

 

Porter Robinson - Language

 

A dance track that breaks absolutely no new ground at all and is absolutely no worse off as a result, mainly because of a synth riff as big, warm and cheesy as a fondue-filled volcano.

 

Asaf Avidan - One Day

 

The surprise big European hit of 2012, and a surprise felt no more greatly than Asaf Avidan himself, an Israeli folk singer who found his delicate folk song with its odd David Gray style vocals remixed onto the continent's dance floors and radios earlier this year. To hear it once is to have it surgically installed to your brain. The sensation is far from unpleasant.

 

Rihanna vs M83 - Midnight City Diamonds

 

You need to root around for this one - it’s a mash up of two records which to me now sound completely dependent on each other. It’s made both songs better, which when you’re starting with material this good is no easy ask.

 

Saint Etienne - Tonight

 

Music journalists make great records, and this is a case in point. In fact, here are music journalists making a great record, about great records. It could hardly fail. I can’t decide whether Saint Etienne are five years behind the times or ten years ahead, but I guess we’ll know by the 2022 edition of this list.

 

Nicki Minaj - Starships

 

Her raps sound like she’s (literally) barking, her alter-ego pretensions are only outranked in their ability to annoy by the blinking, and she may well have been ruder this year at T In The Park than any act in history (maybe she was as perplexed by the booking as everyone at the festival), but Starships has a chorus so good it could probably excuse a war crime.