1. Mr. IFOBCA, "Bill Clinton . . . Robots of the world want you to apologize to Sister Souljah" (MP3)
2. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, "Flowmotion" (from Strength and Loyalty, Interscope)
3. Klaxons, "Golden Skans" (from Myths of the Near Future, XL)
4. Art Brut, "Direct Hit" (from It's a Bit Complicated, Downtown)
5. Against Me! ft. Tegan Quin, "Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart" (from New Wave, Sire)
6. 1990s, "See You At The Lights" (from Cookies, Rough Trade)
7. Amerie, "Crazy Wonderful" (from Because I Love It)
8. Mario ft. Rich Boy, "Kryptonite" (from Go, J)
9. Ne-Yo ft. Jennifer Hudson, "Leaving Tonight" (from Because of You, Def Jam)
10. Nicole Willis & the Soul Investigators, "Keep Reachin' Up" (from Keep Reachin' Up, Light in the Attic)
11. Fall Out Boy, "I've Got All This Ringing in My Ears and None on My Fingers" (from Infinity on High, Island Def Jam)

I'm still not entirely sure what happened this year: Was I truly unenthused by most of the new music that I heard, or did I just hear so much of it that the law of averages just beat me down? I'm suspecting the former and hoping for the latter. Either way, these are not necessarily the best songs of the year, but they're the ones I was most eager to play for other people:

1. A perfect spoken-word intro track, and one that proves that our culture-wide onslaught of '90s nostalgia has yet to hit its peak. In a year in which numerous Midwestern college professors dressed up as robots and harangued ex-presidents, this was really the best of the lot.

2. A throat-grabbing album-opening track, "Motion" sounds like a local-news theme co-written by Bernard Herrmann and the Left Behind authors: overwrought to the point of near-comedy, but scary as shit.

3. Amazingly, it's available at karaoke joints all over Japan. It's really hard to appreciate the joys of that chorus until you've double-teamed the vocals over a tinny MIDI track.

4. I'm going through a guitar-rock Master Cleanse at the moment, in which I diminish (or at least minimize) my auto-pilot acceptance of any U.K. group with three power chords and eleven songs about girls. But those base instincts take a while to sweat out, and when I hear this song's "oh-wooo-hooo" backing vocals, I allow myself to escape over the walls and climb into a getaway car, where I also play some of the latest Ash songs.

5. New Wave is easily my favorite album of the last two years, and here it was abandoned by everyone: By the label, which couldn't sell this record to new listeners, despite having at least four potential singles; by its own fans, many of whom complained about the band's major-label move without actually listening to the thing; and by the music blogosphere/cabal/what-have-you , whose members slackened to the point of paralysis this year, choosing to instead to plug the likes of Under the Blacklight (if you've ever wondered what the Sleeptytime Tea bear wanks off to after celebrating his 30th birthday party, it's Rilo Kiley). Anyway, this song is heartbreaking and tough, and I really thought it was the woman from the Paybacks singing when I first heard it.

6. Same thing with Art Brut, but substitute "ba-da-bah" for "oh-wooo-hooo."

7. Supposedly Rick Rubin is going to let this whole album sit on the shelf until 2019, when the long-expected '80s-revival revival will presumably make it safe. When did everyone start thinking this guy was an irrefutable genius? I have just as many half-baked ideas about how to save the music industry, and I won't waste half the day meditating on the hood of a Ferrari and wondering why nobody "got" 12 Songs.

8. According to my iTunes, I played this song 21 times this year. What? Who? I have no idea how this happened, especially since the version I had was from one of the treble-bumpin' Tapemasters Inc. mixes. It's a pretty stupid song, I admit, but I'm a sucker for anything with springy synthesizer lines and lyrics about being addicted to groupies.

9. A phenomenal no-you-din't duet, one that I'm amazed hasn't been released as a single, especially since it's so much better than that Rihanna track. Most joint-artist songs I've heard in the last two years sound as if the vocals were traded back and forth over a dedicated server, but this must have been recorded together; if you listen closely, you can actually hear Hudson glaring at Ne-Yo from behind the glass whenever he tells another fib.

10. I've listened to that threatening ticking-clock guitar line a zillion times, and I'm still surprised when it opens to a bleak, beautiful chorus. Absolutely spectral.

11. Chicago pop-punk does Chicago V. I can't help myself sometimes.

Brian Raftery is the former editor of Idolator and a contributor to Spin; he is currently (still) working on his karaoke book.