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!

30. Glee Cast - Light Up The World

We gave up on watching Glee about halfway through season 2, but we faithfully kept checking out their songs, and actually got obsessed with quite a few of them. They even ended up being our second most played artist of 2011, although that isn’t that hard when you release pretty much a new EP every week. Although technically every Glee song is a ‘single’ we’ve limited ourselves to their original songs for this list, because letting them take over half of the list with other people’s songs didn’t feel quite right.

We might be pushing it when we say ‘original songs’, because Light Up The World doesn’t sound unlike a ton of songs we’ve heard Ke$ha, Pink or Katy Perry sing before. But, formulaic as it may be, we’re big suckers for Max Martin productions, and this one captures everything we like about them. Naya’s opening is what really makes the song though.

31. Cobra Starship ft. Sabi - You Make Me Feel

When we first heard this, we stated disappointed that it was no Good Girl Go Bad. 7 months later we must say it might be even better than that. The accompanying album was a big letdown, but You Make Me Feel (and especially Sabi’s part) remains insanely catchy. It’s like an improved (but still suspiciously similar) version of JLS’ She Makes Me Wanna.

28. The Wanted - Glad You Came

The far from clever innuendo here doesn’t do the song any favours, but when we put that aside, we’re left with a pretty great song. There’s something Xenomania-like in Glad You Came, with it not just being some average verses and a catchy chorus, but tons of catchy hooks and bits thrown together. Our favourite of them definitely being the ‘let me take you by the hand..’ part where every line nicely starts with the last word from the last line. Nicely done.

27. Little Mix - Cannonball

Unless you’re seriously messing up afterwards, the winner’s single is hardly ever a carreer high for an X Factor act. We sure don’t hope this is Little Mix’s. In hindsight Cannonball, which clearly wasn’t selected with these girls in mind, probably isn’t really final 30 material. But we were on a Little Mix high around the time of us compiling this list, and we had to represent the girls in here somewhere. That said, not being familiar with the original, we still enjoyed this song like it was new one, and it’s not a bad song or version at all. Plus it gave us Perrie’s cute ‘what’s going on?’ moment.

26. The Saturdays - All Fired Up

All Fired Up originally let us down. After the similarly themed Notorious we were hoping for a song with a little more heart, and when it turned out to be yet another ‘fun’ song we would have preferred for the video to actually reflect that fun, instead of being the dark, sexy, slick, pretty but generic thing we got. Plus with it being a Xenomania production we were expecting something mindblowing, and on our first few plays it really wasn’t. But this fire turned out to be a slow burner, eventually clicking, (according to Last.fm) becoming our most played song of 2011, and still being on heavy rotation 6 months later. It still isn’t our favourite Saturdays single, but in hindsight it is definitely a great song and single choice.

Stay tuned for our #25-20 montage soon!