For those of us that buy music by the song rather than by the album or listen to Pandora more than anything else.

I guarantee you my list will differ from just about anyone else's here except for maybe Bishop Hammer.

1. Give Me a Sign (Breaking Benjamin)
2. Lesson Learned (Alice in Chains)
3. New Low (Middle Class Rut)
4. Sick of You (Cake)
5. Animal (Neon Trees)
6. World So Cold (Three Days Grace)
7. Lay Me Down (Dirty Heads)
8. The Sex Is Good (acoustic) (Saving Abel)
9. Say You'll Haunt Me (Stone Sour)
10. Uprising (Muse)
11. The Crow & the Butterfly (Shinedown)

My favorite single -- the only single that mattered in 2010 in my opinion -- was Robyn's "Dancing On My Own"!

In no particular order...

She & Him - In The Sun
The fact that Zooey is so cute in the video had nothing to do with my liking this song. Well, maybe a little.

Sugarland - Stuck Like Glue
The video for this one was downright scary (I've known a few girls like that) but I liked the song even if it's mix of styles hacked off some people. Very few folks listen to one kind of music these days so why not put a reggae rap in a country song?

Cee-Lo Green - Forget You
Also known by a ruder title but I'm just as happy with the cleaned up version. It's just nice to hear someone doing that classic soul sound again.

Go Home Productions - Smells Like Rockin' Robin
Not a single you could buy anywhere, but it got a lot of internet buzz and proved once again that Mark Vidler is king of the mashups.

I'm sure there were some other good ones that I probably won't discover until 2011 or beyond, but that's always the case.

(Moved from the "Favorite releases of 2010" thread)

Need You Now — Lady Antebellum
Bad Romance — Lady Gaga
Lights Down Low — Kim Wilde
Only Girl in the World — Rihanna
Telephone — Lady Gaga
Shame — Robbie Williams & Gary Barlow
Trinity — Paper Tongues
The Flood — Take That
Misery — Maroon 5
Sign Your Name — Sheryl Crow

(@Patrick: Robyn's "Hang With Me" would be #11)

So Dave Baker (hello Atlanta! hello GA!) has given you the pop single list, and Steve gave you a great hard rock list.

Cee-Lo made one great single

Mine would include:

Mystery Zone ---Spoon
Dog Days Are Over ----Florence and the Machine
Tighten Up--- the Black Keys
Cold War ----Michelle Monae
Keep Slipping Away ---A Place to Bury Strangers
Acts of Man---Midlake
Laredo ---Band of Horses
Boyfriend---Best Coast

Suburbs---Arcade Fire
Just the Way You Are ---Bruno Mars (to actually pick something from the pop chart! in which case I should include )
Smile ---Uncle Cracker


Forget You---Cee Lo Greene has been mentioned, I think we all like that one


That Train single seems to have charted in the top 40, like, all year!~
Not Afraid ---Eminem I Like it---Enrique and Teenage Dream---Katy Perry were among the most ubiquitous...I'm leaving off a few others that are at least as popular but they're not really faves, like that list above.
all of Le Noise has been getting similar play on YouTube, I haven't the foggiest what the single is from Neil Young.

My wife LOVES that Bruno Mars song.

If you missed Cee Lo on Colbert, the web site has the uncensored performance. The band was good - the blond keyboard player was way sexy - and the song was just tight. I had to agree with Colbert - with the title, my first thought was "Great, just what we need", but the song is so damn infectious. It's turning up all over the place, too - we heard it in a couple hockey games this week.

And say what you will about the language, I subscribe to Billy Connolly's theory that sometimes you just NEED that word. The "forget" version is good - in fact, it's very good - but when you watch him live, there's that extra little venom in the explicit version.

Alan

Yeah, changing it to "Forget You" is like Charlie Daniels saying "I told you once, you son of a gun". Multiplied through the entire song.

It does lose something.

The funny thing is that this is at least the second song with that title to come out in the recent past. Before Cee-Lo's song there was Lily Allen's, a not-so-timely (by the time her second album came out) anti-Bush rant. Of course, Harry Nilsson used the same "hook" on "You're Breaking My Heart" some 30-something years earlier. Maybe someone should do a mashup of all of them.

Also Rage Against the Machine.

I've got teenagers, so I get a lot of Top 40 radio these days. (UGH!) Some of the tracks that I tolerated better than others this year...

OMG - Usher
Both "You's" - Cee Lo Green
Airplanes - B.o.B.
Grenade - Bruno Mars
Dynamite - Taio Cruz
California Gurls - Katy Perry (Eventually got very sick of it, but it was catchy at first.)

I liked Bruno Mars with B.o.B., too. I have discovered a sensibility in me that can listen to all of those songs, it's just the "hipster" in me that digs the sweet hidden gems.

Warning: gratuitous cuss

Not long after the Colbert appearance, I heard a metal song on XM - "Die MF Die" by Dope. I had the same reaction - really? Turned out to be pretty catchy, too.

Sometimes my wife wonders about me!

Alan