2010 was the year of the super producer. Mark Ronson, Dr. Luke, Red One, and, god knows, David Guetta, were taking over big time from the Armand's and the Tiesto's. It felt like a change, coming up since 2007, was upon us. It was as if every song on the charts was produced by Giorgio Moroder.
But by mid- 2010, Ronson had blown it big time with a terrible follow up to Version and on 2011, debatably the best of them all was recherchezing la femme with Nicki Minaj and Kelly Rowland and to be frank, as great and as popular, as "Where Them Girls At" or even "Sweat" are, they feel like watching a a trick repeated.
Now here is the exception.
Sia isn't a Kelly or Nicki or… Sia is an indie dance girl, more like a Robyn: there is a deadliness to her attack, a seriousness, a pop glam like ABba but over layered with femme angst. Though not a part of the soul girl revival of the UK (she began her career singing back up for Jamiroquai) still there is in her attack something like the snarl of UK femmes as opposed to the more sexually amenable US counterparts.
On David Guetta's latest single, he uses Sia to really great effect. It is not that Guetta was off form this year, more like that he needed to update his form: that as good as some of this stuff is, the Rihanna song wasn't up to much and his earlier work with Flo Rida was superior.
What makes "Titanium" so good is that it has the power of serious indie and still the snap and pop of Guetta. It starts with just an acoustic guitar, then adds Sia's powerful vocal, a drum machine filled with shots, swathes of synth and then a drum right behind. And the drums are like the bullets rattling off her metal facade. It builds weird, and snaps shut with a rimshot and starts again. The metaphor is simple but sturdy ("I'm bulletproof…").. Guetta's best work this year.