2011’s Best Overall Music: Chris Brown feat. Benny Benassi - “Beautiful People”

Only a truly heartless bastard can celebrate after punching his girlfriend in the face and trying to choke her to death. That was the key though to the wildly successful year of Chris Brown, as his label surrounded him with only the most cheerful of EDM, and he rode the wave to the top of the charts. The brilliant simplicity of “Look at Me Now” was phenomenal. Diplo and Afrojack screwed down the Dutch house of “Pon de Floor” and made magic. However, it’s the creator of electro’s first massive anthem, “Satisfaction,” Benny Benassi, whose partnership with Brown on “Beautiful People,” that is at the top of the table. The ambrosia and angel food cake dessert of this past calendar year, it’s so effortlessly dynamic that it leaves you in awe. Sparse instrumentation with airy vocals, it builds into a jacking party with stentorian synths, a Swedish House Mafia “One” mirroring, phenomenal, club crushing heavy hitter.