15. Britney Spears - Hold It Against Me

Although Miss Spears is hardly known for being the most revolutionary or original artist, when it comes to her album’s first singles she almost always brings something completely fresh and unexpected. She did it with Baby…, Slave, Gimme More, and Hold It Against Me once again delivers. Just like these singles turn, what could have been just a pleasant discography, into an amazing one, it’s also songs like Hold It that turned the already good Femme Fatale into an amazing album, and our mostplayed one of 2011. We’re not sure if it’s the stompin’ chorus, the brilliant breakdown, or the great melody (a friend of mine who doesn’t speak English actually commented on what a pretty and emotional song it was, before asking me what it was about..) but it’s definitely her finest moment since Piece Of Me.

14. Jennifer Lopez ft. Pitbull - On The Floor

Being one of the first major hits I can remember hearing and dancing and singing (in some made up language) along to, the Lambada always has had a special place in my heart. You may think with nostalgia like that they could have just shouted ‘GET ON THE FLOOR!!!’ over the song for 3 minutes straight and we would have loved it, but not too long ago the Black Eyed Peas did prove us that sampling a song we love can just as well end up going horribly wrong. So yeah, we were quite pleasantly surprised by how much we loved this song, and how it both worked great as a new song as well as keeping the magic of the original. One of the greatest summer songs we know, despite being released in february.

13. Tove Styrke - Call My Name

Tove might have only come third on Swedish Idol, but she’s still one of the two finest acts to come from that show for us (we’ll get to the other one soon!). Her selftitled debut album is everything a great pop album should be. Diverse, adventurous yet accessible, still growing on you after tons of plays, and pretty much the best Xenomania produced album that isn’t produced by Xenomania we’ve ever heard. If we’d have to pick one thing it’s lacking it would be a properly big in your face ‘tune’. That is, until Call My Name got released, which is exactly that. Every part is interesting as her previous material, but this time with a ridiculously catchy chorus. We dare anyone to give this 2 plays without getting hooked!

12. Nicola Roberts - Beat Of My Drum

L! O! V! E! Since it’s a bit late for us to still do a 2011 album list, I suppose this is where we get to praise Cinderella’s Eyes. Well, sales aside, everything about that album’s era was flawless: we got great b-sides, unplugged versions, remixes, mash-ups, demo versions, stunning coverart, and (not unimportant either) a very very solid album. Although we definitely would have welcomed more songs as fun, feisty and uplifting as Beat Of My Drum. The video with it’s bum dance, hair whips and cheerleaders is still very entertaining as well. When it comes to songs to gleefully shout along to L! U! V! Madonna has got nothing on this.

11. Agnes - Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

We almóst called Tove the greatest Swedish Idol act, when we realized Agnes actually won the show in 2005. However, it wasn’t until her, fittingly titled, third album Dance Love Pop and it’s great single Release Me, that we really started paying attention to her. Although we’re still undecided whether her new single is or isn’t as great as her biggest hit, we are glad she sticked to the same sound, with another ‘heartache on the dancefloor’ anthem with huge vocals. What we would have done for this to have been Steps’ comeback single!

20. Glee Cast - Loser Like Me

There’s an odd pattern here with the last 3 videos all starting with a Max Martin song. And although we’d love to pretend we have something new to say for this one, we really don’t. Just like What The Hell and Light Up The World, Loser Like Me is just a fun, catchy, uplifting piece of pop, that screams ‘underdogs, yay!’. Nothing new, but perfectly entertaining at the same time.

19. Britney Spears - I Wanna Go

Let’s start by saying the video for this was a hot mess. We’re not sure what it was going for, but it made us like the song less, which isn’t really what music videos are supposed to do, is it? But that aside, and ignoring this and the fact that the whistling still reminds us of Bob Sinclar anno 2006, this song really is good fun. Our instant favourite for 3rd single from Femme Fatale, which was our mostplayed album of 2011. The song does a great job of capturing what we liked about early days pure pop Britney.

18. Booty Luv - This Night

When the Saturdays came up with Notorious we found it quite refreshing to see a girl group go dance. A few months later, Booty Luv returned on the scene to remind us they did it first. They did it several times in 2007, one time in 2009, and in 2011 they once again came up with a dance smash that sounded perfectly current, yet 100% Booty Luv. We have no idea what happened since. Why they were suddenly called ‘Cherise & Nadia’. If this even ended up being released. Last thing we read they were shooting a new video in late 2011 though, so we hope they’ll do it all again this year!

17. CocknBullKid - Asthma Attack

We’re not sure what we were expecting when we first saw CocknBullKid’s name, but it wasn’t until months after that we decided to check her out. About 10 minutes later we had her album preordered. Asthma Attack sounded fresh, catchy, fun, and unlike anything we’d heard before. And it had strings. We LOVE strings in pop. But the whole production’s lush actually. Such a great feelgood song. The whole album’s very much worth checking out, don’t let the name put you off!

16. One Direction - What Makes You Beautiful

We’re really not that big on boy bands. Some of them (‘N Sync, Backstreet Boys, Westlife) eventually won us over with some good (mostly uptempo) singles, but a new boy band is never something that makes us sit up and pay attention. And with us not even having watched season 7 of X Factor UK, to be honest the only reason we listened to this song in the first place was because we just relaunched our blog and we felt we had to keep up with all new pop releases out there. (Actually, as long as we have the time for it, we still feel that way.) We weren’t expecting much, leave alone for this to end up being ‘end of the year list material’. But they proved us wrong. Despite not being a Max Martin song, this is the first boyband single to come close to the Backstreet Boys’ great Max Martin powerpop since their own heyday in the early ’00s, and probably the strongest boyband debut single we’ve heard. The album was an equally nice surprise.

Stay tuned for the last 15 songs to be revealed soon!

25. Avril Lavigne - What The Hell

Yes, this is a 26 year old acting like she hasn’t aged one bit since she released her first single 9 years earlier. Not the greatest image when you think about it, but it takes a lot more to keep us from loving a good Max Martin chorus. Plus it’s perfect for our own occasional ‘what the hell’ moments, even though we’re not exactly 17 year old sk8er girls ourselves.

24. Florrie - Experimenting With Rugs

While everyone else was going crazy about I Took A Little Something we instantly had another favourite on Florrie’s Experiments EP. This is emotional Xenomania material at it’s best. No quirky sonsensical lyrics here, like they often come up with, but just a pretty poignant breakup song. Not what they’re most known for, but they’ve showed before that they can do some quite good love songs, and this one’s definitely up there with their greatest. Now can someone explain the title to us?

23. Wynter Gordon - Buy My Love

What at first seemed like a gold diggers anthem to us, actually turned out to be quite a cute song about how ‘you can’t buy her love, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you to try it anyway’. Still, in the wrong hands this could have easily come off a little bit unlikeable. Good thing it ended up with Wynter, who made the song every bit as cheeky, flirty and fun as it should be, with the video being the icing on the cake.

22. The Saturdays - Notorious

It’s not an easy task to follow up on a single as amazing as Higher, but Notorious didn’t disappoint. We’ve heard many people complain that ‘it has no chorus’, and although we’d have trouble to define where that bit starts or ends, who cares when the entire song is filled with hooks? Add to that their most fun video since Just Can’t Get Enough and it pretty much offers everything we want from our favourite girl groups. We may have been obsessed with All Fired Up as well, but Notorious really was one of the Saturdays’ finest moments.

21. Young London - Let Me Go

Nothing to saaaaaaaaaave me now… God, we love this song. When we first heard of Young London we described them as ‘Cobra Starship meets Alphabeat’ and we still hear that. We love upbeat songs with a good powerful emotional chorus and Sarah absolutely rocks this one. Thát chorus is still every bit as strong as the first time we heard it, and makes this song one of the most promising debut singles we’ve ever heard.

Stay tuned for our final 20 soon!