14. Chapel Club - All The Eastern Girls

As I basically said earlier, I really like Chapel Club. I am indeed very excited for their album that was released a couple of days ago. All The Eastern Girls, is a sky scraping epic that looks set to propel them to the top of many people’s bands to watch in the upcoming months, Lewis Bowman once again displays beautiful lyrical sentiments “ All the eastern girls/Are like stars as the night sharpens.” The song starts off hinting at the astronomical ambitions that this band clearly hope to achieve with crashing drums and siren like guitars before completely changing the mood to a star struck love song which sounds almost like a confessional. The tempo of the song continuously shifts and changes like a rollercoaster ride and finally explodes into life for the final minute or so when the band transform into a towering beast of an ensemble and creating a wonderfully powerful, atmospheric noise that feels like its destined to be echoed out of arenas across the country. It’s all of this but still beautifully heartfelt, something that is exceedingly hard to do and Chapel Club has managed this with such ease that it’s astounding that they are still to release an LP. Editors and Interpol have stepped down as the dark Kings of rock and Chapel Club will most certainly be clambering onto the throne for all to hear.

15. Delphic - Counterpoint

Counterpoint is the song that launched Delphic’s career at nearly break neck speed forwards and put them in and amongst the big indie dance slappers. Counterpoint is a near 7 minute long dance trip filled monumental synths that sounds like they’ve been plucked from the very top branch on the Indie Dance tree. This combined with a mountain shouting chorus “Tell me nothing’s wrong today.” It’s dance music with intelligence, like LCD Soundsystem’s slightly dorky, more serious younger brother, perfectly crafted to fill radio airwaves and dance-floors alike. Counterpoint gradually keeps you interested with its vocal distantly sounding like their coming from the room next whilst the synths sound like almost spacey, like stardust falling (I know slightly lame...)before exploding into the final couple of minutes of euphoric, out and out brilliance that almost lifts you off the floor with its sheer intensity. A truly great dance song.

16. Foals - Total Life Forever

For many, Foals had been written off as a run of the mill Indie pop group, mindlessly singing songs about Balloons and running across the stage like an actor with his hair on fire. They certainly aren’t the most charming of bands as many will agree. But there was something different about them, something that made us interested and excited for where they would go to next. Maybe it was the fact that they were all from Oxford like a certain other famous rock band and at that, Oxford University drop outs, or maybe it was the fact that we were generally lost in search of a indie band that could pull us out of the slump at the start of the year and we clung onto Foals hoping they’d see us through. We were right. Their second album was one of the year’s best and the title track was a fantastic mix of afro- Caribbean fuelled dance and experimentation. The irresistible beat glittered with sprinklings of different guitars, keyboards and a funky bass line made this an immediate summer hit at festivals and sweaty summer parties alike. Even better live.

17. Hurts - Sunday

Hurts have been split into a sort of marmite like existence, with people loving and hating them equally, I for one love them and seeing them live was a fantastic mix of a gig and a stage show which was something that I’ve never seen before and thoroughly enjoyed. Though their album didn’t quite live up to expectations all the way through, Hurts showed how good they were at producing brilliantly composed pop songs. Their future single, Sunday is Hurts on top form, yes its unnecessarily dramatic and soppy but lead singer Theo Hutchcraft’s ace vocal croon and a chorus the same size and power of Valuev’s fist, it’s impossible not to sing along. First the uber cool clubs of underground Germany, then the parent friendly music area that it Magic FM, where will they conquer next? You can’t escape them, and this isn’t by any means a bad thing.

18. Big Boi - Shutterbug

Big Boi has released a solo album! The arguably more talented member of Outkast has stopped the constant pleading of his fans to release a new record with Andre 3000 with this awesome track which is possibly this year’s best rap song. Big Boi immediately asserts his authority by laying down a seriously catchy, bad-ass groove which is so much more instantly attention grabbing than anything that I have heard from this genre in such a long time. It’s back to basics rap, it’s pretty much just Big Boi laying down some sick raps, but with the obvious influence of the modern music, therefore cleverly creating a bridge between old and new rap. The likes of Tinchy and Tinie have met their match in a true heavyweight of rap, Big Boi and they better watch their backs.

19. Arcade Fire - Rococo

This is Arcade Fire’s second appearance in my countdown and, by all accounts, a fully deserved one. Rococo is a powerful synth tinged rock anthem which comments on the new found pretentiousness of the hipster culture “They will eat right out of your hand/using great big words that they don’t understand” brilliant combined with the title which is a reference to 18th Century Art Houses. Its tone is extremely dark, starting sinisterly with an acoustic guitar and Win voices echoing down on the audience like a hated headmaster before exploding into its stomping chorus with its stomach turning synth lines and screeching electric guitars where the chorus is chanted over and over like a tribal ritual. Rococo is a nod to their previous record (and what a fine one it was!) but also a grand step forward in their career and a sure fire favourite for many years to come.

A little apology

Well, there's not much I can say by my own admition for not doing my blog other than

1. I have had a handful of deadlines recently
2. I am semi-retarded (this one applies predominately)

I do wanna finish this list though, due to already starting as I left it so anticlimatically in the middle of the list and the fact that I did genuinely enjoy writing this blog. So do read on if you like, I can understand if you don't want to any more as it isn't 2010 but if you do, than that's cool to and i'd like to thank you in advance for putting up with my absolute inability to follow up on what I started.

So, without further adure, here are the Top 20 songs of 2010.