Sexta-feira 31 Dez 2010, 13h:50
25. Echo & The Bunnymen - The Fountain
35 Scrobbles
24. Loverboy - Just Getting Started
35 Scrobbles
23. Maroon 5 - Hands All Over
37 Scrobbles
Maroon 5 returned with their third album this past September. For this new album, they attempted to get funkier with the help of Robert John “Mutt” Lange, producer of “Back In Black”. While listening to most of the album, the tracks were average to almost perfect, but Mutt is always full of surprises. Heck, I’m still stunned by Nickelback’s “Dark Horse”. The album’s best four tracks came back to back to back to back with “Hands All Over”, “How”, “Get Back In My Life”, & “Just A Feeling”. I instantly bought the album when it was at $5 over at Amazon MP3, but before the scrobbles can take off (or before I could burn the songs to a blank CD), my computer failed on me. So after getting the Macbook, I took my time to plot out which MP3s I wanted the most, and then I bought the album again on the last day of the sale. Since then, I scrobbled this album 27 times, with one scrobble sent on New Year’s Eve.
The sale, by the way, was 100 MP3 albums for 5 bucks on Amazon.com for a whole month, and then they bring out new ones. It’s a real recommendation for any MP3 customer that has had it up to here with iTunes’s system.
22. Parachute - Losing Sleep
39 Scrobbles
21. Train - Save Me, San Francisco
40 Scrobbles
20. Neon Trees - Habits
42 Scrobbles
19. 30 Seconds to Mars - This is War
44 Scrobbles
I ended up buying the MP3 album through Wal-Mart sometime at the end of the year, but I spent more time listening to the singles on the album: “Kings and Queens” and “This Is War”. However, for most of 2010, “This is War” was barely listened. Then after hearing about their epic victory at the MTV Video Music Awards for Best Rock Video, many people took notice and began buying their music. Since I bought the album ahead of time, I only had to play it on my iPod. Beginning in September and going on into the next two months, I scrobbled over 20 tracks of 30 Seconds to Mars according to their #7 ranking on Last.fm’s top 40 of 2010. The songs that I enjoyed listening to the most were “Closer to the Edge” and “Vox Populi”. As soon as things began evolving, my computer failed on me and I lost access to the songs. So after I got my Macbook, I went and repurchased the album again. Only this time, I purchased it on CD.
18. Goo Goo Dolls - Something For The Rest Of Us
45 Scrobbles
17. Phil Collins - No Jacket Required
46 Scrobbles
16. Weezer - Weezer
51 Scrobbles
15. Big Time Rush - BTR
52 Scrobbles
Here’s the thing. Big Time Rush is nowhere near my guilty interest in New Kids on the Block. Nor are they near my guilty interest in the Backstreet Boys, as seen by my 168 scrobbles. They aren’t even an inch within my guilty interest for *NSYNC, which dates back to 1998. But the thing about it is that a pop artist can go from mild interest to spreading like wildfire. Big Time Rush, whose show I watch on Nickelodeon with my 5-year-old sister, was one of those moments. When “BTR” was released, I preordered it on iTunes, only because they had “This is Our Someday” as a pre-order only bonus track at the end. I didn’t scrobble this album 52 times because I was becoming a total fanatic for the album. Besides, “Big Night” and “Count on You” were only mediocre. I just scrobbled it naturally, since a few of the songs wanted to be listened to again, particularly “Stuck”. This song was only available as a bonus track on iTunes, and I was very interested in hearing the full song after only hearing snippets of it on the show. It was very important in this case because the preorder had “Stuck” before “This is Our Someday”. “Stuck” didn’t seem like a better closer to the album than “This is Our Someday”, neither did the theme song to the show, so this was the only reason I bought it and through iTunes.
“Stuck” was scrobbled 8 times, which was half of the 16 scrobbles logged in for “Til I Forget About You”, since I bought the single prior to the album. In October, it was back and forth between this and the new Weezer album for the most scrobbles for that month on my Heat Haze widget. I kept scrobbling Weezer more because it didn’t seem good to have Big Time Rush at the top for October. There are so many guilty interests in teen pop artists that I can make evident. While Weezer’s new album still got more scrobbles afterwards, which I will get into later, Big Time Rush did not survive the desktop computer failure in November. The songs have only remained on my iPod, which will be erased if it is plugged into my Macbook, and “This is Our Someday” is no longer on iTunes. So I can assure that there will be no more scrobbles for “BTR” ever again from me.
14. Jaron and The Long Road to Love - Getting Dressed In The Dark
53 Scrobbles
13. Paramore - Brand New Eyes
54 Scrobbles
12. War Tapes - The Continental Divide
55 Scrobbles
11. Steve Perry - Street Talk
57 Scrobbles
10. Atomic Tom - The Moment
60 Scrobbles
9. Mêlée - The Masquerade
61 Scrobbles
8. Weezer - Hurley
63 Scrobbles
The best sure sign that Weezer’s new album would be better than last year’s “Raditude” was that they left their label, Geffen, earlier this year. A lot of people saw that album as a typical end to a relationship between artist and major label kind of album. Turns out, it was just that. The release of “Raditude” completed their six album deal the band had with Geffen after the Blue Album. So they were free to go wherever they want to, and they went to Epitath for an album named after a character from a recently-defunct TV show, and the album cover made it evident.
Could this album be better than the debut or their cult favorite “Pinkerton”? Likely not for everyone, though this ranks higher than the Blue Album on my list. However, it was obvious that they wouldn’t even make the same mistake two albums in a row. Everyone really liked the album, even though this would never top “Pinkerton”. But they did understand that their masterpiece had already been etched into the history of music excellence. I bought “Hurley” on the day of its release as my first MP3 purchase on Amazon, and I got $3 credit on it from the deal that was offered that day. Little did I know that I had $5 credit in MP3s for having registered. So I practically bought the album with no charge.
The lead single “Memories” received 20 scrobbles this year, which included a few other scrobbles prior to the album after it was a free download on Spinner. “Trainwrecks”, my favorite track on the album got scrobbled 11 times, which is the second best for the album. It went back and forth for most scrobbles in October on my Heat Haze widget against Big Time Rush, which I already mentioned before. But while I mentioned that scrobbles for the album continued, it also didn’t survive the demise of my desktop computer in the following month. However, since “Hurley” was so good over two months time, I went and bought it on CD, now that Weezer became one of those bands deserving of a CD purchase from me. Currently, I own “Hurley” along with the Blue Album and Pinkerton.
7. Sugar Ray - Music For Cougars
75 Scrobbles
6. Tamar Kaprelian - Sinner Or A Saint
76 Scrobbles
5. Ashley Tisdale - Guilty Pleasure
76 Scrobbles
4. Demi Lovato - Here We Go Again
79 Scrobbles
3. Taylor Swift - Speak Now
85 Scrobbles
2. Jason Derülo - Jason Derülo
105 Scrobbles
When most of the best-selling acts this year are required to carry an Auto-tune device in order to be heard on top 40 radio, you realize that most of these are just rookies in the music business. So you may need to look deep into these songs to find at least something. With Jason Derülo, I happened to have an interest in his music before I realized that he was in a trend that poses as a threat to music.
Fortunately, I did look deeper into his debut album and found some strokes of genius. I preordered his album on iTunes after listening to "In My Head" many times because there were 9 tracks on the standard copy, and they had a bonus track called "Queen of Hearts", which would be a decent closer to the album and an extra song to it in case it was really good. While he couldn't unseat Ne-Yo as the contemporary heir to Michael Jackson's legacy, it came the closest as far as all the newbies we had this year go. "In My Head" received 27 scrobbles from March to November, while "Love Hangover" had 21 scrobbles in that period, and "Fallen" and "Queen of Hearts" each had 12 scrobbles in that period.
When my iPod couldn't sync my library for a short time, I burned the album to a blank CD, but it went missing a month later. The CD would have come in handy for when my computer stopped working in November. However, the songs I downloaded were still on iTunes with the bonus track, so I downloaded the album again. Unfortunately, I scrobbled the album 7 times since then because the Auto-tune began to get boring by the time I started hunting for indie rock on Amazon MP3. But it's still one great album nevertheless, and he's only a newbie.
1. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
174 Scrobbles
When I stumbled on this album on eMusic last year, I heard them refer it to a John Hughes soundtrack. This year, I fiddled with ways to how to download this full album. First, I got the song "Come Saturday" for free on iTunes. Then I downloaded another song, "Young Adult Friction" free from a music store blog. Then I bought those two songs, plus "Everything With You", from Lala. Unfortunately, Lala was closed before I could complete the album.
Afterwards, I tried to buy a few of the songs separately before getting the rest of the album. The problem was that iTunes never enabled the "Complete My Album" feature for this album. So it took another iTunes card with $15 credit, and I soon bought the full album in June. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart logged in a load of plays during the summer, with the majority of them being in June and July.
At one point, my iPhone would not sync new songs, so I burned the album to a blank CD so I would listen to it while on vacation. But the CD came in better use after my desktop stopped working, so my download of the album was one of the few maintained. At the end of the year, this self-titled debut from 2009 became my most scrobbled album overall to date.
I wish this album would have been released in 2010, so I can proudly say that this was my favorite album of the year. Either that, or I should have heard this last year. Sometimes the best stuff is discovered after its release year. However, I'm glad I took a listen to it this year and have this account to prove how it stood above all of this year's music.