The track, from Britney’s “Femme Fatale” album, took top spot in the magazine’s Pop Life column by Rob Sheffield.
The list is made up of Sheffield’s “25 favorite songs of 2011, including but not limited to: hits, obscurities, disco jams, guitar monsters, boof-boof chants, pelican-fly rappers and karaoke-room-clearers. And Stevie Nicks, obviously.”
Spears finshed ahead of songs by Big Sean, Beyonce, EMA, Bon Iver, and the team of Jay-Z/Kanye West.
Rob describes “How I Roll” this way:
“Britney hooks up with the Swedish production duo Bloodshy and Avant, who also gave her "Toxic" in 2004 and "Piece of Me" in 2007, and like the first two chapters of the trilogy, it's fiendishly inventive girl noise. Every sound effect that jumps out of the mix – Brit slurring the word "speakerrrr," digital finger-snaps, a real beatbox pretending to be a human beatbox – builds the tension.
There's even a plot: An ordinary girl sits in her lonely room, dreaming of party lights far away, wishing she could escape to a place where she can show her kneesocks and drink tequila on the rocks, where there's music and there's people and they're young and alive.
But the mean old world won't let her break free, so she just sings along with the machines until she turns into a machine herself, because only the beat understands her. There's your story of pop music right there.”
Below is the Top 10; for the full list, visit Rolling Stone here.
Top 25 Songs of 2011
Rolling Stone – Pop Life column
01. Britney Spears - "How I Roll"
02. Big Sean ft. Nicki Minaj - "Dance (A$$) (Remix)"
03. Beyoncé - "Countdown"
04. EMA - "California"
05. Bon Iver - "Beth/Rest"
06. Jay-Z and Kanye West ft. Frank Ocean - "No Church In The Wild"
07. Pistol Annies - "Hell On Heels"
08. Rebecca Black - "Friday"
09. Nicki Minaj - "Super Bass"
10. Stevie Nicks - "Annabel Lee"
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