The top three songs on Spotify, March 20, 2012. "Young" is at No. 1 on the Hot 100; "Know" is at No. 5; and "Came" is at No. 4.

​How do you know when you're at the dawn of a new pop era?

It's not like someone sends a memo. Sure, occasionally there's a well-timed cultural event that offers a hint—the disastrous Altamont festival in December 1969, which signaled that the flower-power dream was over, or Comiskey Park's Disco Demolition Night in July 1979, which warned that dance music's days were numbered, at least with middle-American dudes. But even bright temporal lines like these only seem significant in retrospect, and they don't actually change the sound of young America overnight.

The same goes for the Billboard charts, the Dow Jones Industrial Average of pop. Occasionally you get a No. 1 hit on the Hot 100 that feels like a revolution instantly. Or there's a blockbuster album that feels like a generational torch passing.

This week, the song sitting on top the Hot 100 doesn't necessarily sound like a revolution. But from its title on down, "We Are Young," the soaring, Janelle Monáe-assisted rock anthem by emo-pomp band fun, wants to be generational. Two weeks ago, fun. rampaged their way to the summit thanks to a pileup of digital sales. For each of the last two weeks, "We Are Young" has topped the very healthy sum of 300,000 downloads; it's the only song to roll that many weekly downloads in 2012, let alone do it twice.

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​The Grammys created the awkwardly named Best Rap/Sung Collaboration category ten years ago, around the time Ja Rule's various "thug love" duets were dominating the airwaves. The award recognized a growing sector of popular music that didn't quite fit into the preexisting rap, R&B or pop song awards, and its creation was a prescient move. In 2001, 13% of Billboard's Year-End Hot 100 Songs featured at least one rapper and one singer; in 2011 that number had doubled to 26% (after peaking at 33% in 2010). The category's a little more unpredictable this year, as NARAS snubbed the biggest dancefloor-friendly rapped-and-sung hits of the year ("Give Me Everything," "Party Rock Anthem," "On The Floor," "E.T.") in favor of more urban radio fare.

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via ABC

Justin Bieber at last year's American Music Awards.

​Welcome to Sound of the City's liveblog of the 2011 American Music Awards, the annual salute to the most popular popular music that exists in the American wild this year. While Lady Gaga and Adele and Beyoncé are absent, this year's show apparently has one performance that will cost $500,000 to pull off, as well as a David Guetta/Nicki Minaj outing that is heavy—heavy in the weight sense, not in the "societal import" sense because c'mon we're talking about King Of Eurogloss David Guetta here—and appearances by Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy (sigh) Perry, Kelly Clarkson, and other notables from the Hot 100. Come join us for the next three hours, won't you?

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Let's hope this delay doesn't change the album cover.

​Over the weekend the sad-sack MC Drake put up a sad blog post announcing that Take Care, his long-in-the-works second album, would be coming out on November 15, and not in time for his 25th birthday on October 24. "So I have completed 19 songs (17 on physical and 2 on bonus), and have run into a roadblock of clearing 3 samples in time to make the October 24th date," he wrote. "My options were to take the songs off and make the birthday release happen, or to take an extra couple weeks to get the paper work right and give you the album they way I NEED you to hear it. The choice was clear as day for me. November 15th you will get Take Care the exact way I created it with no trimmings. This music means too much to me to get attached to dates and I do apologize for the delay but I promise that it is only for the benefit of our experience together." You can almost hear the pride of Ontario appending a ", baby," to that last sentence, no?

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via Billboard

Three people who have never been in my kitchen.

​When I hear the name "Lenny Kravitz" I instantly think his retro grabs, songs that are at their best expertly crafted and can flow seamlessly into the hits from its era, or at their worst something that sounds like a lazy rock trope remixed and regurgitated. Today two tracks from his forthcoming album Black And White America leaked, and one of them, "Sunflower," is a cracking bit of lite-funk with a shiny brass section and a jangling beat. It all sprints along... until Drake shows up. "I'm not that good with words, but I'll try my best," he starts things off by saying. Oh, Drake. Always making it about you, eh? Clip below.

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Hot 97 has announced the lineup for Summer Jam '11, and it's (perhaps unsurprisingly) filled with Young Money acts: superstars Lil Wayne and Drake act as the de facto headliners, while a non-specific set by Young Money, the label, is on tap. Could that possibly mean an eventual cameo by Nicki Minaj--perhaps one where she assists Drizzy on "Up All Night"?

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As the Weeknd says, "XO till we overdose.."

​Two days ago, r&b changed again. On Sunday night, a Canadian collective called the Weeknd released their nine-song mixtape, House of Balloons, on their web site. Though they were quick to deny the direct involvement of Drake's sonic architect, Noah "40" Shebib, the apparitions in The Weeknd--no official members have yet come forward--have been heavily co-signed by the Toronto star. Why? Because they are Canadian countrymen? Because the Weeknd's spacious, moody r&b deconstruction further cements Drake and 40's reinvention of the genre? Is it just pure aesthetic appreciation? They're all probably true. What is irrefutable is the calculation that has thus far gone into this project.

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Guess who? Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.

​Alright, let's do this, before I change my mind. With apologies to The-Dream, Sleigh Bells, Ted Leo, Kylesa, Swans, Zola Jesus, Marnie Stern, and all other vestiges of my punk rock past, and especially you Nicki Minaj, who missed both of my lists this year. How that happened I still don't understand, but onward, before it's too late. Half of these records are about mental breakdowns; the other half are about beating the whole world. I relate to both sentiments:

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Rich aliens, rich alienation. Still via connect.in.com

​With sincere apologies to Chuck Eddy, my two favorite records of the year also produced my two favorite singles: funny how that happens. And though ten songs increasingly feels like about forty too few, especially when Dr. Luke is working, nothing was knocking "Runaway" off this list. What can I say? Been waiting fifteen years for rap to get this emo and for emo to get this rap. As for the rest of it, well, as Sean Fennessey noted in this space last week, most of these songs are ignorant as hell. The rest are about love. I'm not proud:

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​Not every great song this year was released by Katy Perry. From a snarling avant-electro NPR lecture to a haunted-house posse cut to a ludicrously profane viral sensation, here are 10 examples. "Teenage Dream" might still be better than all of these, though. Better get this started before I change my mind.

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