The final countdown

OK, the following few days ("few" possibly being an inaccurate description, depending on how quickly I go through them) will be dedicated to my countdown of my favorite singles of 2007. Before it starts, though, I wanted to go through some explanatory stuff.

1.) The single must have been released as a single for the first time in 2007. In other words, not only are these singles, singles that were re-released in 2007 or released in a new region don't count, even if I didn't discover them until this year. For example, Ninja's "Hush Hush" won't be showing up on the list; it may have been released in Sweden in 2007 and I may have found out about it this year, but it was a single in 2006 in Finland. You also won't see, say, Kylie's "Wow" or Darren Hayes's "Casey" because of this, since, though they came out in 2007 and are/are probably going to be singles in the future, they won't be singles this year. By the same token, songs from 2006 albums that were 2007 singles are eligible, though I think they kind of suffer in the ultimate rankings just from having been around so long.

2.) In a few cases, a "remix" may be the basis for the song's inclusion, but only if the remix got significant enough exposure that it could be seen as a single in its own right--i.e., it was the primary version of the song used or it got radio play on non-dance radio stations.

3.) There will be 54 singles on the list. It was INCREDIBLY difficult for me to narrow it down to that number, and I'm very tempted at some point to do a "#55-x" extension of the list because there are so many many fantastic songs this year.

4.) The placing in the list is really pretty arbitrary for a lot of songs--#54 could just as easily be #1. Really, it should probably just be an unranked list.

5.) I will be posting more than one song a day. These posts will also serve as my mp3-oriented posts. I won't be posting mp3s for every song on the list; the songs may be so well-known that there's no point to it, I may feel like I've shared that song recently enough that there's no point in sharing it again, etc. Sometimes, the mp3 I post in association with a song may not be the song I'm writing about but another track from the artist that I feel is worthy of note; it could also be a remix, cover, or something else.

6.) Songs that were promoed to radio but not released physically count, as long as there is not a known plan to release them physically in that region later (this applies to, say, a fourth single from an album in Europe or something).

7.) "With Every Heartbeat" was not eligible. I love that song, but for me, it is just too inextricably linked to 2006--and the middle of 2006 at that--to figure out where it truly ranked. I realize this goes against all my earlier rules (even the Swedish release took place in January 2007), but I just couldn't put it in the same group as the rest of these songs. (As I mentioned, songs that I heard before 2006 are already at a disadvantage [albeit unintended] anyway.) Kind of similarly, there's one song currently on the chart that was first released (though not as a single) back in October of 2006 that may get swapped out at the last second if the mood strikes.

8.) Songs from national finals for Eurovision 2008 that have already begun to take place (for example, in Icealnd) are not eligible for 2007, as often songs will undergo some tweaking before Eurovision should they win their national final; these songs will be eligible for 2008.

9.) Each post should have a "find it on" section linking you to somewhere to buy a physical copy of the song or, if I don't know of such a place, somewhere to buy a digital copy (the "find it on" won't necessarily refer to the mp3 posted in association with each post, but rather the main single being described).

10.) These are my favorite singles of 2007--not necessarily the best, and there will probably be heavy use of the word "I" in my descriptions; there's a good chance much of what I write will be about what I think about when I hear the songs, associate them with, what I like about them, what kind of reaction they bring out in me, etc. Not that that's all it'll be, but I'm just as likely to spend the whole post describing some anecdote or personal feeling about a song as I am likely to provide description about the song and the artist's background.

11.) I imagine by the time I've finished the countdown and actually written about all these songs, I'll want to change the order entirely, so the final final list may actually appear on the last day of the countdown.

Yeah, that makes all this look really serious, doesn't it? It's not.

Some statistics:

• The country with the most songs on the list is (no surprise) Sweden. Second place, by only one song? The U.S.
  
• There are no "pure" boy bands on the list. This should be a huge indication of how difficult it was for me to come up with this list--so many songs I adore got cut that it's practically going to be physically painful to do this list without them.
• Three artists have multiple entries on this chart.
• 52% of the songs have male main/lead vocals, 43% have female lead vocals, and 6% are boy-girl sung (or sung-rapped, if there's about an equal balance). Yes, that adds up to 101%; that's just how the math works out.