The Top 10 songs from a year are a snapshot of what the culture values.

So what’s important?

Two things: desperate romance and partying.

The overall message? Let’s party and score a partner while we’re at it. And like a bad hangover it’ll be a painful mess if it doesn’t work out.

Romance has traditionally been the main subject of pop music. And of course there’s something deeply spiritual about love, courtship and desire. That goes back to the Old Testament’s “Song of Solomon.” Courtship, desire for the right partner, admiration of your partner’s beauty are all deeply spiritual things. But the most popular songs of 2012 show a darker side to romance.

There’s an intense desire to find a partner. It’s almost as if a romantic partner is a savior. If you find one you’re on a transcendental high. If you lose one you’re stripped of your identity and plunged into despair. Romance has always been idealized in Western culture. But now it seems to have become an idol and almost an all or nothing desire. At least if you look at the top ten songs of 2012.

In the world of these songs and music videos it’s not about discovering a spiritual mate or a special kind of love. And it’s about more than just the hookup songs that have been around for decades. It seems to be about a more narcissistic desire — or loss.

When the songs are about loss of love it’s more about either self-imposed alienation (Gotye) or banal self-help style survival (Kelly Clarkson). When the songs are about prowling for new partners or finding new romance it’s all in a party atmosphere – usually at a nightclub or a beach (The Wanted). Picking a partner is like picking a drink: what will give you the best buzz?

The party and romance themes are such a convention and tired cliché that Fun.’s “We Are Young” may be the cleverest of all the Top 10 music videos. It both celebrates and parodies the convention of attractive partying young people in a nightclub. But otherwise these music videos play out clichés of romance and partying that haven’t changed much since music videos invaded suburbia through MTV in the 1980s. The edits have just gotten faster, the people prettier, and the parties bigger.

The spiritual aspect to all of these songs is romance – but they’re about either the beginning or the end of a relationship. Nothing about the inbetween where most of us live. Getting and losing are where these songs are at. And the desire or pain when you’re at one end of it.

Isn’t there anything else going on in the world?

 1. “Someone I Used To Know,” Goyte

I don’t know what I want, so I’ll mope and not move on

This mopey adult contemporary breakup song has the artsiest music video of all the songs in the Top 10. The camera creeps up Goyte’s naked body (symbolism that he’s stripped to his core emotion—yeah, we get it). There’s some stop motion painting on a backdrop behind him. Further on in the video his body is painted too which turns him into kind of a tragic clown.

The agony of the breakup for the singer is that “you didn’t have to cut me off.” She apparently wanted to be friends. But that still makes him feel like she’s a stranger. It doesn’t seem to be enough. In a strange paradox he’s glad the relationship is over and knows that it won’t work — but he still wants some connection with her.

His emotional pain is answered by singer Kimbra who responds with her point of view to the breakup. She sounds more assured and together. He blamed her for too much, she’s tired of overanalyzing the relationship, and is surprised that he couldn’t let the relationship go.

The singer doesn’t seem to know what he wants — other than to not feel alienated from her. There’s something narcissistic here. His pride is damaged because he didn’t “think she’s stoop so low.” She even took his vinyl away from him! He admits that he doesn’t want her love. He’s more bothered that she treats him like a stranger. It looks like she’s moved on and he hasn’t.

This is a song about almost a neurotic sense of alienation from a person he doesn’t seem to even really want. It seems to be all about him, not her.

2. “Call Me Maybe,” Carly Rae Jepson

Careful girls, what you see isn’t always what you get

This music video starts with Jepson looking out of a window fanning herself with a romance novel. So what does she see? Yep, a real life hunk. Jepson is soon ogling hunky lawn mower boy who dramatically takes his shirt off. This is a switch. The man in the music video has fewer clothes on than the woman. Almost always it’s the opposite. And it’s attraction at first sight because the song tells us “I just met you, this is crazy.”

Soon Jepson is out in her driveway washing her car trying to get the dude to notice her. It’s kind of pathetic. Why doesn’t she just talk to him? When she falls off the car onto the driveway, the hunk helps her up. She writes down her phone number. But in a twist ending the hunk scribbles his phone number and gives it to one of Carly’s male bandmates.

Her romantic illusions are shattered. Maybe this is a lesson and she needs to shed her expectations of what a partner should be? But it seems more novelty than any grand realization.

There’s more of that yearning for a partner here with lines like “I’d sell my soul for wish, pennies and dimes for a kiss” and “Before I met you, I missed you so bad.” But what’s maybe the strangest is the tentativeness in the song’s title. Why call me maybe? Isn’t she confident enough to say “call me”? With no maybe.

3. “We Are Young,” Fun.

The exhaustion and downside of partying

Is the song a parody, a celebration, or both?

While a band plays on stage in a nightclub, there’s an argument between a couple that triggers a brawl. Objects are thrown, people float through the air, and there’s some smooching between one couple amid the chaos. The slow motion effects produce a sense of exhaustion. So it looks like this is a parody — the pretty young things partying music video cliché is shattered.

Despite the fatigue and excessive partying, there’s a feeling of wanting to transcend the brutal bar — which looks anything but fun. We especially get that feeling from one girl who looks sincerely at the camera and sings along. She seems to look at us to say, “get me out of here.”

The song has an interesting theme of wanting to be taken “home.” Some might say that’s about a hookup. But there seems to be more to it. The line “the angels never arrived, but I can hear the choir” suggests something spiritual is on the way.  It may be about that moment of hitting a spiritual rock bottom when you know you need help. The bar and hookup life can run its course. It reminds me of some of the Psalms where the writer at his lowest most desperate point suddenly finds transcendence and faith.

There’s a big distance between being so high that “we can burn brighter than the sun” and needing to be carried home to a safe place. The singer has gone through that place. This song is about a pivotal moment of wanting to be delivered from hedonism to something else. The nightclub looks like a fun time but in the end descends into violence, excess, and loneliness. There’s something else that’s needed when “the bar closes.” This song and music video is about that moment.

4. “Payphone,” Maroon 5

A confusing escape with lots of flames and tattoos

Bruised Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine stumbles from a burning car under a remote highway bridge. His cell phone doesn’t work. So he flings it into the flames and goes to a pay phone.

The story flashes back. He’s sitting at his job at a desk in a bank. A group of masked bankrobbers storm into the bank. He and a female co-worker make a bold escape as they dodge bullets the bandits fire at them.  They flee the police who believe they are behind the heist. Levine steals a car, leaves behind his pretty co-worker, races onto a highway and tricks the pursuing police to escape him before his car goes up in flames.

None of this really makes sense. Since he’s not responsible for the robbery why does he run away from the police? Why does he ditch his attractive co-worker? And why does the car blow up at the end? One can only conclude he doesn’t care and wants to escape. Why does he dislike his life so much?

The big B: the breakup. Well, just maybe. At first the music video doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the song. But maybe Levine is such a reckless dude because he’s angry about a breakup?

This isn’t the mopeyness of Goyte. The lyrics are like a nasty note a high school student wrote to an ex-girlfriend. He can’t bear to hear love songs. He feels like he’s wasted his time. He can’t move on.

He’s whiney and angry. So in the music video is the strange and risky breakout a self-destructive impulse to leave his routine life behind? Is it the fantasy of a bored worker drone? Or does the music video just have nothing to do with the song? No matter what it is, the song is about as boring as a breakup song can be.

5. “Lights,” Ellie Goulding

These may be more than party lights

This music video is the most straightforward of any video on this list. Goulding dances with ethereal back lighting and lasers behind her — sometimes with graphics swirling around her. She avoids the clichés of dancing around with other attractive people and being underdressed. It looks almost retro simple compared to the stimulus-filled music videos in the other Top 10 songs.

But what is she singing about? The song can be interpreted as a breakup song with Goulding singing “I had a heart but the queen was overthrown.” She can’t sleep at night and tries to reassure herself that she’ll “be strong.” Is this just another “I Will Survive”-themed breakup song?

I’m not so sure. There may be more going on here. The emphasis here is on lights that are “calling me home.” She seems to be homesick for something – or maybe longing for something that can revive her when she’s alone. Could the “lights” be some kind of transcendental spiritual energy? Or is that she can’t sleep in the dark because of some kind of fear?

She sings about “the brother of my sister” and wanting to feel safe. So is this a song about childhood trauma and insecurity? The words are too vague to say for sure what this is all about. But the lights seem to represent something more important than the subjects of most of the songs on this list.

6. “Glad You Came,” The Wanted

Boys on the prowl picking their prey

Here we go.

Music video cliché: the male fantasy of prowling and posturing in front of women on beaches, in boats, in pools, and in party rooms. Some of the singers pair off with a woman. But it’s mostly a blur of desire where all women are shown in bikinis or other stages of undress. All look like available commodities.

Indistinguishable from a commercial for a tropical island cruise, the singers ambush parties and beachesl. Typical of the convention of the current male fantasy music video, there are not just a few attractive women. No, it takes a village of attractive women these days. They’re seen in quick shots of smiling faces and body parts.

The fantasy is in the possibility of so many available flavors of women. With so much variety, there’s no time for the camera to linger too long on any one woman. And there’s some fragmentation here with only parts of bodies shown of women.

This kind of male fantasy music video has been a staple since Duran Duran invented the convention of objectified women in their original “Girls On Film” music video in 1981. But the convention now is to include as many women as possible in a music video. One woman is not enough. And the woman is not a romance object, just available. For the singers of The Wanted, it’s a jungle of sex objects and the conquering heroes take their pick of available prey.

7. “Stronger,” Kelly Clarkson

Hey dude, you ain’t gonna break me

Another breakup song. But it’s more “I Will Survive” than the gloom of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.”

Clarkson tells her former lover that he “tried to break me” but she will carry on.

The music video tries to universalize this theme of strength through overcoming difficulty. So there are shots of women dancing along to her song. But it’s clumsily done. It may have been intended as a symbol of feminine empowerment, but it just looks campy. And there are awkward dancers in a concluding dance number that looks like something out of a bad Pat Benetar music video from the 1980s.

With so much pop music being around romance and the fallout from failed romance, one wonders how much better this would have been if Clarkson had carried through her “stronger” theme to something broader. The spiritual theme of growing through adversity might have been something Clarkson could have built on in some meaningful way. But she didn’t.

8.“We Found Love,” Rihanna

Remembering desperate down-and-out romance

This is an intoxicating song (the best musically on this list) with an infectious chorus of “we found love in a hopeless place.” And there are many possibilities for a powerful music video with that hook and theme. But the music video is a bizarre depiction of a down-and-out love affair with allusions to drugs, drinking, and violence.

Strange is the glamor in the squalor. At times Rihanna  poses as if she’s in an underwear or perfume commercial. So there’s a disturbing allure to what appears to be a life of drug-induced desperation.

The oppressive hi-rises shown in the background and the spoken introduction suggest a kind of rough hopelessness Rihanna and her partner lived in. Rihanna may be reminiscing about the desperation of a difficult time in her past. But we don’t see enough of that underworld. In the convention of modern music videos, all must be centered on sexuality and the convention of pretty and energetic people jumping around. Rhinanna supplies some of this herself. But then the music video shifts to other pretty young things during a muddy rave outdoors.

This shows the sexuality of a star like Rihanna has to be the dominant depiction in a music video. Too bad. This song and concept had the potential to be something powerful. But the sexualization of a major female star — even in poverty and desperation — overrides everything.

9. “Starships,” Nicki Minjah

Celestial bombshell parties down

A beach is the setting for this music video. Gee, how original.

Here Minjah—materializing as if she’s an extraterrestrial–is a voluptuous fetish object. The colors of her hair and bikini make her more like a comic book fantasy. She’s sometimes surrounded or observed by what appears to be island natives who at carry her around like she’s a tropical deity. Without a male love interest she seems to be an exotic bombshell in charge of this island paradise. She seems so obsessed with herself that she can’t even have a partner.

The final part of the video transitions to a strange psychedelia-rave setting. With – of course – the usual battalion of pretty semi-dressed men and women dancing and fist pumping.

The lyrics are a defiant rant about drinking, partying, dancing, spending your money on payday, and not caring who you have sex with. She’d rather do that then pay the rent. Maybe her life is a drag and she’s tired of it. But the answer here is hedonism and temporary relief.

10. “What Makes You Beautiful,” One Direction

Yeah, you’re hot, but is anyone as beautiful as us?

Irony of ironies: the boy band singers gush to a woman “you don’t know you’re beautiful, that’s what makes you beautiful” while the music video contains beautiful women.

Lyrically, it’s a silly song. The pretty boys are turned on by someone who flips her hair a certain way, doesn’t wear makeup, and is insecure.

The music video is a PG-rated variation on the male fantasy of willing and friendly young women who for some reason flock to beaches. Because the song is by a boy group targeted to teens and tweens, there isn’t the fragmentation of body parts and the abundance of underdressed women featured in most girls-at-the-beach music videos. But the women are objectified by gazing and smiling directly at the camera and at the singers. It’s about what media theorists call the male gaze: women act as if they enjoy being looked at.

There’s a lot of narcissism here with the five male singers in this group. Their clothes and hairstyles make them look more like models than singers. There isn’t the overt sexuality of other videos — just a lot of eye candy and self-indulgence in a music video to a song that is about admiring humility. But the way the camera lingers on them, these boys seem more infatuated with themselves than anything else.