Music

Land of Talk, Owen Pallett Are Hunted

by Michael Joffe

There’s a lot of year-end lists floating around out there. We’ve been publishing our own staff lists all week and just released a top ten albums of 2009. But opinions aside, what were the most popular songs of 2009? We are Hunted and The Hype Machine do a pretty good job of tracking songs as they emerge online. Hunted has just released its 99 most popular songs of 2009 and you can expect Hypem to follow up with another Music Zeitgeist, similar to their 2008 list.

On this year’s Hunted list a few obvious tracks and artists stand out – Yeah Yeah Yeahs, St. Vincent, The xx, Beach House, to name a few. But there are also some nice surprises like Land of Talk’s beautiful ‘May You Never’ sitting at #31, Chromeo’s Night by Night at #52 and Owen Pallett’s freshly released Lewis Takes Action at #67.  Is it possible that Lewis Takes action could be one of the 99 most popular songs online in 2009 after less than a month?  There are definitely questions about the validity of WAH’s list, but if you can get over that small issue it’s a pretty good archive of a great year in music. It might even serve as a good playlist for your NYE party tonight.

I’m off to go chat with electro group DVAS who will be tearing up The Garrison tonight to ring in the new year in Toronto.   Thanks for reading. Have a great and safe new years with an awesome soundtrack. See you in 2010.