Just gonna stand there and watch me burn?
Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.
2010 : Love The Way You Lie - Eminem Featuring Rihanna
I'm a bit surprised this took the year, but I'm not complaining because it's a damn fine track with both of them using their experience with "difficult" relationships to deliver top emotional performances. The video works pretty well for me, featuring Dominic Monaghan and Megan Fox although there were some complaints that it featured scenes of domestic violence - which does make me wonder exactly were they expecting to see in it. Fluffy bunnies? Either way, it's one of YouTube's most watched videos (and the most watched rap video) with over 2.5 billion views.
Wikipedia tells us the song was written by Skylar Grey (along with Alex da Kid) and was originally about her relationship with the music industry. Unsurprisingly, it also tells us that "critics have commented on the message in the lyrics" with everyone having their own take on the song and whether it was justifying, glorifying, apologising or demonising - you could ask Eminem and he'd probably say it was all or none, depending on his mood that day. Whatever its stance, it did pretty well commercially getting to #1 in 21 countries, including the US and was the best selling track of the year in Australia and the UK. The entry also reminds us that there's a "Love The Way (Part II)" (on this album) which has the roles reversed and I quite like the way they've done it.
Wikipedia also gives us some cover versions, although some of them content is very, very inessential - I did not need to know that The Daily Express didn't like Cher Lloyd's X Factor version! (to be fair, it's not great). Other versions mentioned are Eric Stanley (it's quite impressive, but I'd struggle to describe it as a cover) and A Skylit Drive (which is certainly something). secondhandsongs.com also offers us a few more, most of which are from talent shows and none of which I've heard of and YouTube gives us J.Fla (an interesting, if not great, version) and Skylar Grey (the co-writer of the song - I liked this version, although it's really Part II).
Given it was the best selling track of the year over here, I'm not surprised this took the year. Rihanna was also responsible for the only other decent track in the year end top five, because we've got Matt Cardle's "When We Collide", Bruno Mars's "Just The Way You Are", RIhanna's "Only Girl (In The World)" and Usher's "OMG" - which is not a great selection. Some slightly better tracks from further down are Owl City's "Fireflies" (#6), Katy Perry's "California Gurls" (#8) and "Firework" (#19), CeeLoo Green's "Forget(!) You" (#12), Alicia Keys's "Empire State Of Mind", Plan B's "She Said" (#16), Iyaz's "Replay" (#18 - and #1 in the week our youngest was born) and Glee and Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" (#24 & #25). It was really quite the year for both Katy and Rihanna with both of them featuring five times in the year end top 100.
Looking further down the charts throughout the year, we can also find Ellie Goulding's "Starry Eyed", Robyn's "Dancing On My Own", Katy B's "Katy On A Mission" and Duck Sauce's "Barbra Streisand" - which isn't the hugest selection we've seen so far. Looking across the Atlantic, the #1 track of the year over there was Kesha's "Tik Tok", which I don't remember at all but it got to #4 over here. Eminem and Rihanna are at #6 but unsurprisingly, the rest of the chart doesn't really offer up anything new because there's a load of overlap with what we were listening to here.
There are other tracks I prefer from 2010, but I'm perfectly happy for this understated pair to take the year - it's a well-written track which they pour a lot of emotion into.
Comments
Post a Comment