Front man Will.I.Am and crew's The E.N.D. (The Energy Never Dies), despite its silly name, has refused to sink down the Billboard album chart, and two singles, the perfectly good "Boom Boom Pow" and the perfectly dreadful "I Gotta Feeling" have taken turns topping the Hot 100.
What follows is a playlist of the best of the big hits woven together with indie contenders. It clocks in at just under 80 minutes, CD length. Without limits, I would have included Passion Pit and Green Day and Spoon and Silversun Pickups and Those Darlins and the Clipse. All are available on iTunes and Amazon, except for the Jackson cover, which is on Twitter.
1. "Boom Boom Pow," Black Eyed Peas. Is it an allusion to a sex act or a soundtrack to a Perez Hilton beat-down? No matter. The important thing is it's a rare Black Eyed Peas single whose inane lyrics don't get in the way of the groove.
2. "Knock You Down," Keri Hilson with Kanye West and Ne-Yo. Hmm, which Kanye West collabo to choose? Could go with the Clipse's "Kind of Like a Big Deal," Mr. Hudson's "Supernova," or the Dream's "Walking on the Moon." But "Knock You Down" gets the nod for its satisfying hook, and West's accidentally timely lyric referencing the late King of Pop and his allegedly abusive father: "This is bad, real bad - Michael Jackson / Now I'm mad, real mad - Joe Jackson."
3. "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)," Jay-Z. The first single from The Blueprint 3, due in September, demonstrates Jay-Z's usual impeccable timing. The voice-altering trickery known as Auto-Tune is so overplayed - by, among many others, West, who produced this track - that the time is ripe to stand up for more organic music-making. While comparing himself to "Sinatra at the opera," Jigga raps over a screaming guitar: "I'm a multimillionaire / So how come I'm the hardest . . . out there?"
