The Top 10 Everything of 2009

There are those who find this Versailles quartet's choruses a little too catchy, their perfectly honed hooks a shade too perfect. Could these Frenchmen be rocking out ... ironically? Perhaps a little. You can't write a wonderfully sunny song about Franz Liszt as a teen idol ("Lisztomania") or have an appreciation for the comic potential of disco without at least some sense of the absurd. But these 10 economical tracks are hardly without feeling. For proof, just listen to lead singer Thomas Mars on the wonderful "1901," as passion subsumes wit and he's left warbling the purest rock lyrics of all: "I'll be anything you ask and more/ You're going hey hey hey hey hey hey hey."