Spotify says that All Night Long by Alexandra Burke is my top song of the decade, and I’m not mad about it. Actually, I gasped with delight when I found out. The single version featuring Pitbull (and “featuring Pitbull” is very much a trope of the last decade in pop) came out in May 2010, but still slaps like Pat Butcher and Peggy Mitchell now. It’s a song that brings back vaguely wistful memories – being in sweaty gay bars on Old Compton Street, essentially – but also a very specific one.
I was sent to interview Alexandra Burke shortly before she released the album that All Night Long appears on; she was the most recent X Factor winner and so full of energy and excitement. She even gave me a sneaky tour of Simon Cowell’s office, which I remember as being a) very tidy, b) in need of some more succulents and c) disappointingly Sinitta-free. Sadly, Alexandra Burke’s time as a chart-topping pop artist proved to be limited, but I still say she was hard done by. When she got her hands on a massive dance-pop banger like All Night Long, she sold it like a total pro.
According to Spotify, “dance-pop” is my top genre of both 2019 and the decade overall. Again, I accept this verdict willingly: if mainly listening to pop songs that are fast enough to dance to makes me basic, then your honour, I am truly basic.
All Fired Up by the Saturdays, one of my top songs of the decade, is unpretentious dance-pop at its best. For me, it’s a song inextricably linked with messy drinking sessions where someone does a lopsided slutdrop to the iconic line: “We make the party super-naughty.” Great times, lads.
During my 13 or so years as a music journalist, I’ve found that when you meet an artist and they behave badly, it does slightly spoil the music for you. That’s probably why my Spotify Wrapped playlist features no songs by [redacted] or [redacted]. Thankfully, in the last couple of years I’ve had super-positive professional experiences with the Saturdays’ Mollie King, who’s now a DJ, and MNEK, the singer-songwriter-producer who co-wrote All Fired Up. So, here’s to more lopsided slutdrops in 2020 and beyond, provided my ageing knees can take it of course.
I’m not shocked that Madonna is my top artist of the decade, but I’m kind of surprised she’s also my top artist of 2019. I guess it reflects how firmly embedded her music is in my life. I’m still listening to classic Madgebangers all the time – her 2005 transcendenthouse tune Get Together in the gym, her 1980s gem Open Your Heart while mopping the floor (seriously, try this: you’ll finish the job faster), her underrated 1990s ballad I’ll Remember when some chump ghosts me.
And though listening to music on Spotify is sometimes a pleasurably solitary thing, I find it often reflects some kind of communal experience. Seeing Madonna as my top artist of the decade reminds me that she also provided my live music event of the decade. I was at her gig at the O2 in London on 1 December 2015, when she marked World Aids Day by performing a truly moving acoustic version of Like a Prayer. Knowing that Madonna lost close friends to the disease in the 1980s, I found it an incredibly poignant moment that highlighted her deep-rooted bond with the LGBTQ+ community.
Less poignant, perhaps, and more inexplicable, is the fact that my top song of 2019 is Dancing on the Ceiling by Lionel Richie. Honestly, I have no idea how this happened – but the data doesn’t lie – other than to suggest that sooner or later I was bound to begin morphing into my dad. Still, Lionel is surely one of the nicest guys in pop, and Dancing on the Ceiling is a bop for the ages, so I’m proud to have racked up his Spotify streams this year. Actually, I also really love his other bona fide party classic All Night Long (All Night) – though not quite as much as I love Alexandra Burke’s song of nearly the same name. Obviously.
To celebrate the end of the decade, Spotify is unlocking 10 years of your streaming data. Get your Wrapped now and relive the music that mattered to you – and click here to find all the music that mattered to Nick Levine
