#6 Darin feat. Kat DeLuna, "Breathing Your Love"

I wanna spend
My nights
And days
Between your arms
Every day breathing your love

"Breathing Your Love" is, heaven help me, sexy. It's a term I usually avoid applying to songs at all costs, try to work around and explain their appeal in any other way possible--maybe a result of defensiveness from years of "you're a girl, you only like something because X singer is hot, your music taste isn't valid" from just about all corners of the world--but oh my gosh, it is. You don't necessarily have to be hot to make a sexy song, so more important than anything Swedish singer Darin might look like or even who he is is the fact that when the RedOne-created dancefloor-friendly synth beats here wrap around me I never want them to let me go, that Darin's gasped out "baby, breathing your love, love, love" at the end is almost intolerable in the best possible way, that his voice and delivery still makes for one of the best pop voices going, that the melody had me caught up like an addict, that just listening to it is enough to change the way I walk. That the song's writers (which includes Darin) have gone out of their way to allow Darin opportunities to do his über-recognizable pronounciation of "ooo" even induces a grin, even if it's more one of laughter than anything else.

If Usher's going to be off messing around with the ballad side of maturity and Chris Brown is mining the rich field of gentle adorable Europop beats, we need to go somewhere for our urban pop made for the clubs, with that pounding bite and that bit of sexy to it; I love cute pop songs and love pop songs that are dedications to the disco, but I can't live on them alone. Thank goodness that Darin, amazing popstar that he is, is there for us again.

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