So I’m recovering from last night’s Paul McCartney concert. I’m still in shock. We waited over 45 minutes just to get in the front door of the arena. Definitely gave me a healthy respect for those of you who go to our shows and slug it out. Just as I squeezed through the entrance, the sky opened up and drenched the crowd still shoving it’s way in.

Then the tornado sirens started going off. Not good.

Totally worth it though.

This was Paul’s first time playing Nashville and the guys in the Sugarband pooled their resources and called in favors to get me a ticket. 10th row. That’s right. Kenny Chesney was in the 4th row. How he got better seats than me I’ll never know. Emmy Lou Harris was sitting next to us. I hope I didn’t scare her.

Cause I was rockin’…

Any time they played a Beatles song I went completely berserk. Jumping up and down, flailing around. The waterworks started during Paul’s tribute to John, “Here Today.”

“And if I say, I really loved you

and was glad you came along

then you were here today

for you were in my song.”

Waaaaaaaaahhhhhhh! (Sound of me crying)

Then the George tribute. Paul rocked the ukulele on “Something.” Unbelievable. Pictures of George flashed in the background. It didn’t help that he looks EXACTLY like my little brother Austin. It was too much to bear.

What the hell? (Austin’s on the right in case you couldn’t tell them apart.)

Baaaaaaahhhaahhhaaa waaaaahhhaaaahh! (Uncontrollable sobbing)

I didn’t take a single picture. I was too overwhelmed. But my friend Kenny Corbett took over 300 pictures.  Most of the ones of me look like this…

At one point, a woman in the audience held up a sign that read “Paul, I have your Hofner bass tattooed on my back. Will you sign it?”

Paul said, “What the heck, get her up here.” This poor woman was shaking and sobbing in front of 20,000 people. She turned around and sure enough, right below her neck was an 6 inch miniature of Paul’s bass. She asked if he would sign underneath so she can tattoo over his signature. This poor creature was a complete wreck. It was truly an amazing moment. I was half screaming, half crying, along with everybody else. Good God.

Check it:

Um, amazing.

When they kicked off the final encore, I disintegrated. When they went into The End medley, I was toast. I jumped up and down for the entire guitar solo, which lasted about 4 minutes. I could barely walk when it was over.

And it ended like this:

All I could say was “Thank you.” I just kept screaming “Thank you!” Throughout the evening, I realized how much the Beatles have defined my entire life. Every chapter of my childhood is marked by whatever Beatles record I was absorbed in at the time. I remember jumping on my mom’s bed, age 7, singing along with the movie Hard Day’s Night and having the realization that I was singing harmony for the first time. Age 11, I was (still) playing Barbies and wearing out Magical Mystery Tour. At 13 I took a disastrous ski trip with Camp Ozark and sat in the back of the bus listening to Abbey Road, shivering and crying. (This ski trip would make a great blog actually.) I was a camp counselor at age 14 and would sit on the swing set listening to the White Album on cassette during my breaks. At 15 I weened myself off of falling asleep to the television by coming full circle and falling asleep to Hard Day’s Night on my CD player.

The Beatles are, in my opinion, the greatest band in the history of Rock and Roll. And I’m so grateful that I got close to greatness last night. Thank you Kenny and Sugarband for this amazing gift. I know that some of you out there consider Sugarland to be the soundtrack of your life and I’d like to state that I’m honored to be a part of their show. I hope to do my best every night to take people to a place of wonder and leave them with a heart filled with gratitude for the gift of music.

Thank you Paul! You’ve changed my life!

Me on Mardi Gras day, 2006

I get tons of emails from people asking about cool places to visit and great restaurants to check out while in New Orleans so I felt it prudent to simply compile them in a blog for general reference. It’s hard to be a tourist in your own home town so I’m just including links to the stuff that I like to do when I’m home. You should probably do a swamp tour, riverboat tour, cemetery tour, eat some crawfish, etc…

Ok, here we go!

Restaurants (in cool neighborhoods that you should explore)

Adolfo’s -Located in The Marigny

Le Crepe Nanou -Uptown

Cote Sud – Riverbend

Cafe’ Degas – Mid city

Port of Call – French Quarter

Bars/Music Venues

The Chillun’s at Tipitina’s, Jan. 2010

Tipitina’s - Uptown. This is where I play every year with the Chillun’s. Considered New Orleans’ premier music venue.

Snug Harbor – The Marigny. Great jazz. A real listening room. Great food as well.

Mimi’s in the Marigny – The Marigny. Relaxed, lounge atmosphere. My dad plays here on Sunday nights with Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Review. Killer spot.

Rock and Bowl – Uptown. Bowling and live music. So much fun, good food too. I had my 18th birthday here. And yes, I was the house band at my own birthday party.

The Maple Leaf – Classic New Orleans bar, live music. Located uptown in the Carrolton area. Same bar where scenes from the movie “Ray” (the Ray Charles movie) were filmed.

Carrolton Station – Uptown/Carrolton. Played this bar a lot when I was a kid. My dad’s band Twangorama plays here a lot. Great atmosphere, great music.

The Circle Bar - This is my uncle Dave’s bar. Located downtown on Lee Circle. Dark, vibey atmosphere, I played here a lot with Davis Rogan, the inspiration for Steve Zahn’s character on HBO’s “Treme.”

Snake and Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge – Another establishment of Uncle Dave’s, this is a local favorite hole in the wall bar uptown. Don’t show up here until around 2 am. That’s when the party gets started.

Things to do:

Walk up and down Magazine Street – Daytime boutique shopping, restaurants, tons of fun!

The Marigny/Frenchman Street – Super cool neighborhood adjacent to the French Quarter. So many great music venues. This is the new scene and the place to be at night.

Decatur Street - Shopping and eating in the Quarter without all the madness of Bourbon Street. This is where I did all of my vintage/thrift shopping as a teen.

Walk around The Garden District - Beautiful old New Orleans architecture and cemeteries. A lovely, relaxing way to take in the charm of New Orleans.

Of course this is just scratching the surface of all the wonderful things to do, see, and eat in New Orleans. Feel free to follow up with comments about any of your favorite spots! Enjoy exploring this wonderful city!

A dirty word…

Waaaaaaaaaayyyy back in the day (like, 2006) we shared a bill with Lambert in a cornfield somewhere in the midwest. I hit it off with some guys in her band who invited me to stop by their bus after our set. I knocked on the bus door and Miranda answered. I told her I’d been asked to stop by and she said, “Sure, come on up. I’m sure everyone’s gonna want to gurm you.” Or something like that.

She stepped off, I stood there confused, and then I boarded the bus for drinks and chit chat. No gurming as far as I could tell. I went back and asked my band mates what “gurm” meant, in the same way a kid hears a dirty word at school and has to go home and ask her parents about it. I got a general definition, something along the lines of how a crazy fan will hang all over you in an uncool way. Hmm…

Searching for answers…

4 years later (this week) I finally decided to look up the definition of “gurm” in the Urban Dictionary:

1. Gurm

A person who displays uncool, groveling, embarrassing, obsessive, inappropriate, or presumptuous behavior in a way that oversteps boundairies or portocol, witout realizing that they’re out of line.

Uh oh.

Turns out I’M the guilty gurmer and I’ve been gurming my fave band Little Big Town for a while now. I basically want to be both Kimberly and Karen. Like Sunday night at our show in Columbia Maryland. We decided to play “Life in a Northern Town” (a past collaboration with LBT and Jake Owen) and have opener Jake Owen join us. And since Little Big Town wasn’t there, I figured I’d sing the parts of both Kimberly AND Karen.

(On a side note, if you’d been a friend of mine as a little girl and Little Big Town had existed back then, I would’ve made you come over to my house everyday after school to play “Little Big Town” and I’d get to be BOTH Kimberly and Karen. Not one or the other. You’d either have to be Jimi or Daisy Pearl while I got to be some hybrid human being named KimberlyKaren or something like that.)

I finally got my chance at the show on Sunday.

Gurm in a Northern Town…

We hadn’t run through Life in a Northern Town with Jennifer at sound check so I hadn’t exactly told her that I’d be singing both Kimberly and Karen’s parts. Cut to show time. In the middle of the song, when it came time for the 2nd verse, I sang Kimberly’s line. Jen then looked at me, presumably to see if she was gonna step up and take Karen’s “hey yeah, yeah” at the end of Kimberly’s part. But I just kept right on singing. Jen smiled and raised her eyebrows in a “Go ahead, Gurmy!” sort of look.

The awful truth…

This made me reflect on my life. I started looking back on my life-experiences with Little Big Town. The pictures I’d taken of them. The videos. My collection of Little Big Town look-a-like Barbie dolls. The incessant viewings of Karen’s Facebook profile. The way I watched them night after night and sang and danced on the side of the stage in such a fitful manner that eventually, no one would go out there with me. The signs were everywhere…

Gurm alert.

Here are some photographs of me at Little Big Town’s fan club party last year.

But I also gurm Miranda…

So it turns out Miranda had pegged the wrong gurm. And this couldn’t have been more evident then last month when Blake Shelton opened for us at a Dr. Pepper corporate show in Las Vegas. I was backstage getting ready when someone casually mentioned that Miranda was about to sit in with Blake. Guess who dropped her makeup with a clatter and ran to the side of the stage, knocking people over so she could get there in time to watch Lambert with rapt, wide-eyed delight?

Gurm alert.

But I had a revelation about each of the protagonists in these novels last night…

If you’re not genuinely kind or don’t have a self-deprecating sense of humor, I don’t want to know you.

They say that life is a series of peering into other’s faces, searching for a reflection of yourself. You tend to resonate with people who are similar to you. And I don’t see a shred of myself in Robert Langdon, Mikael Blomkvist, or Bella Swan. First off, I’d argue that none of them have a sense of humor. On top of that, Blomkvist is just an A-hole. (I may use the term “A-hole” quite a bit in this blog.) For example, in Dragon Tattoo, Blomkvist runs into an old friend. He says things to himself like, “I started wondering why we were ever friends at all” which has no bearing on the plot, it’s just an A-hole type of thing to say. As this friend is recounting a story, Blomkvist interjects with “Get to the point.” What? Really? I don’t know anyone who would say something like that, particularly an old friend.  And if they said that to me, I’d never want to talk to them again. How can I get invested in a book with a protagonist like this???

Here’s the problem…

Authors create super-hero versions of themselves… And they’re all A-holes.

Take Langdon and Blomkvist. Both are “boyishly handsome,” even though they’re both approaching 60. Both have a string of convenient lovers to whom they have no real emotional attachment. They’re both described as having “a way with women.” Blomkvist is in a relationship with a married woman who’s husband allows her to sleep at Blomkvist’s house on the weekends. Uh huh. I don’t think so. And both characters randomly are experienced in what the authors must perceive to be expensive, elite hobbies. Like yachting. Or olympic swimming. Or having been the bass player in a band that actually got some radio play in the 70’s. Gimme a break. I’m so sick of these authors living their dreams through their ridiculous characters. Especially since they all keep turing out to be A-holes.

But what really gets me…

When the hell do these people eat?

If I have to read another line about someone “absentmindedly pushing food around on his/her plate” I’m gonna smack someone with a pie in the face. It seems like all these people do is drink coffee. They’re always too upset to eat, in too much of hurry, or whatever other excuse the author can come up with to keep these characters positively gaunt. Bella Swan, a typical anorexic, is forever concerning herself with the nutritional needs of others and “forgetting” to feed herself. Just another case of an author filling gaping plot holes with the conveniently conjured-up talents of the protagonist. I never had a problem with the vampires. That was perfectly believable to me. What wasn’t believable was that Bella was randomly little miss teen Top Chef, a tidbit that was thrown in along with the equally unbelievable absentee mother whom Bella apparently cooked for from the age of 3.

After having read the contents of this blog, I’ve come to a disturbing conclusion…

I might actually be an A-hole too…

So it looks like I’m having some tolerance issues with people with whom I can’t identify. And that’s an A-hole issue. But at least I can admit that I have a problem, unlike some of these protagonists. I’d like to think that I have a self-deprecating sense of humor and that I’m generally very kind. I just can’t get past the issue of WHY these authors seem to think that people like Blomkvist, Langdon, and Swan are heroes. I think Bella Swan is one of the most boring characters on the planet. I think the author had to make Bella’s super-power the ability to block people from reading her mind because there’s nothing particularly interesting IN her mind to read. Now I would never tell that to her face. But I will write it in a blog, A-hole style. Hmm…

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Country’s Grammy-award winning duo Sugarland opened up the concert season at Phoenix’s Cricket Pavilion last night with their “Incredible Machine Tour.” The multi-platinum selling artists put on a dynamic set, revisiting staples like “Already Gone” and “Stay” while also giving a sneak preview of their new album material with a “Hey, hey, things are looking better” song that segued into Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”

Sugarland’s bassist Annie Clements enjoyed several moments in the spotlight, laying down the low end on her Fender Jazz Bass with Jennifer Nettles on “It Happens” and then providing background vocals during one of the evening’s highlights – a mash-up of Beyoncé’s“Single Ladies,” Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA.”

On the opposite side of the stage, guitarist Thad Beaty put his new Fender American Vintage Jazzmaster to use.

Known for playing hip covers, Sugarland also traveled back to the ‘70s during one of their encore numbers with Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” a tune that saw Kristian Bush jamming on his Fender Joe Strummer Telecaster, a birthday present from his band last year.

]]> http://www.annieclementsmusic.com/2010/05/05/official-fender-show-review-4210/feed/ 0 http://www.annieclementsmusic.com/2010/05/04/santa-barbara-bowl-review/ http://www.annieclementsmusic.com/2010/05/04/santa-barbara-bowl-review/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 19:04:27 +0000 annie http://www.annieclementsmusic.com/?p=863 They called me a standout star!

Sugarland at the Santa Barbara Bowl

S.B. Goes Country for Grammy Winning Duo

Thursday, April 29, 2010

by MICHELLE DROWN

Last Sunday night, country music superstars Sugarland rocked the S.B. Bowl. Hitting the stage like a ball of fire, lead singer Jennifer Nettles led the band through three rollicking songs — including their 2006 hit “Settlin’” — before even stopping to say hi to her audience.

“How’s everybody,” Nettles later inquired with her Southern twang. “We are so excited to be with you in your fair city. You are lucky to live here and the humidity is great for me. I was born in the swamp. I practically have gills,” she added, laughing. The at-capacity audience seemed to hang on Nettles’s every word (and note), often confirming their devotion by scream-singing along with the songs she belted.

Clad in black boots, fitted jeans, long shiny necklaces, and a glimmering short jacket, the Georgia native blew the figurative roof off the place with her powerful vocals. She was effervescent on stage, skipping, dancing, and fully engaging the audience throughout the show. Kristian Bush, the only other official member of Sugarland, wore green-and-blue checkered fitted trousers and provided a steady pulse of acoustic guitar and back-up vocals. Joining the duo was lead guitarist Scott Patton, guitarist Thad Beaty, bassist (and standout star) Annie Clements, keyboardist Brandon Bush, and drummer Travis McNabb.

Though categorized as country music, Sugarland’s Southern accents were often the only thing country about them. From their appearances — an amalgamation of ‘80s rock and post-punk threads — to their songs, Sugarland appears deeply entrenched in pop stylings. Which isn’t a bad thing. The band is excellent at what they do: perform solid music with catchy hooks and lyrics that beg to be sung along to. And their hits “Baby Girl” and “It Happens” stood as toe-tapping testaments to just why they’re so popular.

Throughout Sunday night’s set, Nettles seemed to truly enjoy herself, and she delighted the crowd by including them in the show. She had the audience sing along on “All I Want to Do,” after which she cooed, “You sound so pretty.” But it was “Want To” that really showcased Nettles’ vocal prowess. Her soulful voice dipped into rich low notes that wrapped around you like a warm blanket. And when she sang Sugarland’s Grammy-winning ballad “Stay,” the depth of her vocal talent was again made clear.

Santa Barbara was just one of the first in Sugarland’s 63-stop tour, which extends through October, when their new album, The Incredible Machine, is slated to be released. Perhaps, then, it was their daunting schedule that forced the band to keep their set short, clocking in at only one hour and 20 minutes. But then again, by the time they encored with a spot-on rendition of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” I doubt it mattered much anyway.

Every time I have a chat with Mrs. Ruth, she tosses off some comment about her past that blows my mind.

Thought I’d share a few these with you…

Mrs. Ruth on technology:

“I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard a radio. We had a battery-operated radio in our house before we had electricity in our house.”

“Cars were not commonplace back then. If you heard a car coming down the road, all the kids ran out of their houses to see who it was. And if you heard an airplane, well, everyone ran out of the house and watched it fly all the way across the horizon until it was out of sight.”

Mrs. Ruth at a condo association meeting when someone proposed we do away with paper notices and move everything over to online communication:

“Now see here! I’ve gotten along just fine for 85 years without that internet business and I’m not gonna start fooling around with it now!”

Mrs. Ruth also often tries to propose issues to be voted on in these meetings like letting everyone paint their front door a different color.

“I certainly think it’d be a bit more cheerful around here if everyone’s door wasn’t brown. How about we choose between 4 different colors? I like red. Can we vote on that?”

Mrs. Ruth on childbirth:

“My granddaughter just had her first baby and I reckon there were about 10 people in that delivery room. Parents, friends, goodness it was crowded. When I had my son it was just me and the doctor. I wouldn’t have wanted people to see me in that state. My husband waited in the lobby. In fact, my labor went on for so long that the doctor went out to the lobby and said “Mr. Ford, I reckon you should go down to the movie theater. This is gonna be a while.”

Mrs. Ruth grew up on a farm and continues to grow vegetables on her back patio. One day I noticed a beautiful black iron cauldron in which she was growing some cabbage. I wanted one for my patio and asked her where she got hers.

“Oh that? That’s the pot that my mother use to boil water in for the laundry. She did all of our laundry in that pot. And you never did see whiter whites than what she pulled out of that pot.”

Mind blown.

I think it’s a shame how much we take for granted these days. You’d certainly appreciate a clean shirt a heck of a lot more if you had to boil it in a pot outside in the freezing cold. And what am I gonna do with my old washing machine? Probably not plant cabbage in it. Every time I chat with Mrs. Ruth I’m shocked to realize how quickly things have changed. What will I tell my neighbors when I’m 85? That I remember when you actually had to use your hands to play video games instead of manipulating them telepathically with the chip implanted in your head?

Terrifying.

I’m just blessed to have some time to be reminded about the way things were from Mrs. Ruth…

But first, a description of the movie:

Plot Summary for

Love Don’t Let Me Down (2010) More at IMDbPro »

A drama centered on a rising country-music songwriter (Hedlund) who sparks with a fallen star (Paltrow). Together, they mount his ascent and her comeback, which leads to romantic complications involving her husband/manager (McGraw) and a beauty queen-turned-singer (Meester).

Gwenyth Paltrow                                                                               Garret Hedlund
Tim McGraw                                                                                       Leighton Meester

The movie is basically your typical love triangle (or in this case square) featuring the classic manager-husband (McGraw) and his struggling singer-wife (Paltrow) and the drama that thusly ensues.

How I managed to get cast as an extra:

I was contacted in the middle of our break by a Sugarland fan (Sarah) who had come across an email from the casting office looking for people in Nashville with flexible schedules to be extras for the film.  I’d also recently watched “Yes Man” and had adopted an attitude of saying “yes” to just about anything that came my way.  So I filled out the form, including my measurements, past experience, (I didn’t know if country music award shows counted but I wrote them down anyway) attached a picture and got a phone call 2 days later letting me know I’d been cast! Woohoo! When the lady on the phone said “I think everyone should be an extra at least once in their life” I probably should’ve had second thoughts…

But what about those myths I promised to dispel?

Myth 1. Actors and Actresses have fancy dressing rooms.

Reality: We were corralled at an abandoned strip club.

No joke. The production company needed to find a facility to house, feed, and store the possessions of about 50 extras for the 12-14 hours a day that we were on the set. What better place to do so than the old, abandoned strip club “Cocktails” located right off the interstate downtown? Cocktails had plenty of seating, a buffet downstairs, mirrors where we could do our makeup, and even a pole in the middle of the room where we could stretch out. Needless to say, I didn’t touch anything.

(My friend Eddy gives the pole a try)

Myth 2. I’m going to be in a movie!

Reality: The back of my head is going to be in a movie.

I was placed in several scenes where I was asked to pretend to engage in an animated conversation with other extras while one of the principal actors walked down a hallway backstage. I was always placed with my back to the camera. So you’ll probably get a good idea of what the back of my head looks like if you happen to see this movie.

Myth 3. I’m going to become best friends with Tim McGraw!

Reality: Despite the fact that I was placed in a scene where Tim, a makeup artist, and I had to wait in a room a little bigger than a utility closet together and walk out into a hallway on cue, I never mustered up the courage to introduce myself to him.

Here’s the set up. Gwyneth has just performed. Tim walks through a door (presumably from the stage or an office – not a utility closet) and into a hallway backstage to shake hands with the promoter. After Tim’s line, I walk out of the same door, carrying an armful of manilla folders with a look of hurried determination on my face like I’ve got someplace really important I’ve got to go with these papers. (I actually just walk across the hallway out of the shot which then cues 2 other extras to walk back across the hallway into the closet Tim and I just left.)  We had to tape this scene over and over again. Which meant that I was in this tiny room with Tim waiting for the crew to reset the scene over and over again for almost an hour.

And I didn’t have the nerve. I couldn’t find an “in.” I was too chicken to just say, “Hey man, I’m Annie, a fellow Louisiana native and Sugarland’s bassist.” Instead I just stood around smiling in between takes as Tim sang songs, whistled, and put water bottles in Garret Hedlund’s footpath to trip him up as he came bursting out of another door behind Tim at the end of the scene. The water bottle prank was pretty freakin’ funny actually.

Will I ever be an extra again?

I’m pretty torn to be honest. The whole experience was so bizarre. There was so much sitting around, waiting to get picked for a scene that it made me feel like we, as extras, were like dogs at the pound, hoping someone would come along and pluck one of us from the pack and take us home. Every time the casting director would walk into the room, we’d all look up hopefully from our seats in our folding chairs, holding our breath, keeping our fingers crossed. The reality is that extras are really nothing more than walking, talking props – and that’s not the greatest feeling.

On the flip side, I met a lot of great people, made a little money, and will probably get to see the back of my head in a movie.

Extra Perspective:

I found this article called “Love Don’t Let Me Down’ needs extras in Nashville” asking for folks to volunteer as extras and come to the auditorium for a big crowd scene. But more importantly, the discussion beneath the article pretty well sums up the 2 different ways you can view being an extra. Here are the words of 2 people who were extras in the big concert scene…

Ron February 10, 2010 at 12:14 am

This was the climactic scene, however, the majority of the crowd footage from Feb. 2nd will be dubbed over with footage that was filmed on the 3rd with paid extras. Being an extra is boring work, and the chances of showing up in the finished product are slim to none. The only benefit to the role of extra is if you get paid the standard $58/8 daily rate…free $$$, and they might feed you at least once during the time you’re there on set.

Tony February 13, 2010 at 12:46 am

I’ve been a paid extra for 2 years now and “yes” it’s boring.”yes” i got paid.”yes they fed me.”yes” some of my scenes were cut while others were not.   And “YES” it was the most fun the best learning experience, and least “work” that i have done EVER!

It’s not about getting paid or even making it past the cutting room floor. It’s about being part of a project with hundreds sometimes thousands of people.

You wont get rich being an extra but you will meet some of the most brilliant, talented, fascinating people on the planet, and some of those people are in a position to find you other work that does pay very well.

I guess I tend to agree more with Tony. Keep an eye out for the back of my head when “Love Don’t Let Me Down” hits the theaters!

The List…

iTunes Reveals Top 25 Downloads Of All Time
(Updated) “iTunes changed the way you buy music, making songs and albums available for download, day or night,” declared Apple on the site. “Seven years later, we’re about to celebrate our biggest milestone for music, yet—10 billion songs downloaded.” The 10 billionth downloader will win a $10,000 iTunes gift card.
As part of the promotion iTunes is also offering a rare glimpse at its most downloaded songs of all time:

1) “I Gotta Feeling,” Black Eyed Peas
2) “Poker Face,” Lady Gaga
3) “Boom Boom Pow,” Black Eyed Peas
4) “I’m Yours,” Jason Mraz
5) “Viva la Vida,” Coldplay
6) “Just Dance,” Lady Gaga & Colby O’Donis
7) “Low,” Flo Rida (featuring T-Pain)
8.) “Love Story,” Taylor Swift
9) “Bleeding Love,” Leona Lewis
10) “TiK ToK,” Ke$ha
11) “Disturbia,” Rihanna
12) “So What,” Pink
13) “I Kissed a Girl,” Katy Perry
14) “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” Beyoncé
15) “Hot N Cold,” Katy Perry
16) “Stronger,” Kanye West
17) “Live Your Life,” T.I. (featuring Rihanna)
18) “Hey There Delilah,” Plain White T’s
19) “Right Round,” Flo Rida
20) “Party in the U.S.A.,” Miley Cyrus
21) “Don’t Stop Believin’,” Journey
22) “Bad Romance,” Lady Gaga
23) “Use Somebody,” Kings of Leon
24) “Fireflies,” Owl City
25) “How to Save a Life,” the Fray

Ok, here’s what I’ve downloaded: 5) “Viva la Vida,” Coldplay, 8.) “Love Story,” Taylor Swift, 14) “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” Beyoncé, 23) “Use Somebody,” Kings of Leon, 24) “Fireflies,” Owl City.

I love all of the songs I downloaded, particularly “Single Ladies” and “Fireflies.” Don’t much about Flo Rida. Am I missing something? Please enlighten me…