Top 10 Hits of the End of the World is a studio album by psychedelic dance duo Prince Rama consisting of sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson. Produced by Scott Colburn, it is a "retrospective requiem of all pop albums ever made" where Prince Rama revives the spirits of ten fictional musical acts who died during the apocalypse to perform hits: Arabian group Guns of Dubai, English dance act I.M.M.O.R.T.A.L.I.F.E., mafia musical group Nu Fighters, protest band Rage Peace, architect group Taohaus, Bollywood film soundtrack duo Goloka, Black Elk Speaks, virtual group Hyparxia, "dancerise" duo The Metaphysixxx, and commercially successful group Motel Memory.
The apocalypse concept of Top 10 Hits of the End of the World was inspired by the works of Chris Marker, Paul Laffoley, and Jean Baudrillard and continues Prince Rama's idea of the "now age" present in their previous records, where a period or moment becomes lost once it is named a "now age." A major theme of the album is based on musical acts in real life that "possess" the spirits of musical groups and artists that came before, such as Lady Gaga channeling Madonna and Creed channeling Pearl Jam. Musically, Top 10 Hits of the End of the World was influenced by pop music from several nations such as Arabian territories, France, Sweden, and Cambodia. It also includes elements of several genres such as what Paw Tracks' press release described as "tribal goth," "motorcycle rock," and "ghost-modern glam."
Promoted with three pre-album-release singles ("So Destroyed," "Those Who Live For Love Will Live Forever," and "Welcome to the Now Age") and two music and multimedia (for "So Destroyed" and "Those Who Live For Love Will Live Forever"), Top 10 Hits of the End of the World was released by the label Paw Tracks on November 6, 2012. Several professional music journalists were polarized with Top 10 Hits of the End of the World; some reviewers felt that the album did not contain elements promised by its concept and the press release, and some critics criticized the duo for departing from the style and sound that defined them on their previous records. However, the LP also garnered many positive responses from other critics, some calling it Prince Rama's best album while others praising the concept for how it benefited its music.
Concept Kanu bhai Taraka Larson, while looking through the history of songs that topped Billboard's Hot 100 chart, noticed "eerie correlations between some of the apocalypses and their corresponding #1 hits," such as "Til the World Ends" by Britney Spears ranking number one on the week Harold Camping predicted a rapture: "I'm really fascinated by how pop music becomes this vehicle for mass consciousness to encode messages of mass destruction. It's the perfect disguise. So I thought, wow, if the world ended this year, what would the #1 hit singles be?"Armie, Sean (December 15, 2012). "An interview at the end of the world". NUVO. Retrieved July 13, 2017. This influenced Larson to make a record with the concept of a compilation album of apocalyptic number-one hits.
Described by Paw Tracks' press release as a "retrospective requiem of all pop albums ever made," Top 10 Hits of the End of the World is a set of post-apocalyptic hits by fictional musical acts, a concept writer Lindsay MaHarry described as "meta-textual role-playing."MaHarry, Lindsay (November 14, 2012). "Apocalypse, Wow: Behind Prince Rama’s Concept Album". Spin. SpinMedia. Retrieved July 8, 2017. On the LP, Prince Rama "channel[s]" the ghosts of these acts who were killed in an apocalypse.Prince Rama "Top Ten Hits of the End of the World" press page. Paw Tracks. Retrieved July 8, 2017. Its main theme is time periods being "possessed" by later or earlier eras. Taraka Larson explains that the LP deals with "the present being possessed by the past, the past being haunted by the future, [and] the future being eclipsed by present nostalgia." Real-life examples of artists "channeling" spirits of acts that came before include Lady Gaga channeling Madonna and Creed channeling Pearl Jam.
The post-apocalyptic elements of Top 10 Hits of the End of the World's concept were inspired by La Jetée (1962), a science fiction featurette by Chris Marker. Prince Rama praised the film for "making amnesia romantic again through a series of still images that create a post-apocalyptic environment." In making the LP, the group also read about the concepts of Hauntology, Jean Baudrillard's theories about history, and essays by visionary artist Paul Laffoley on "Thanaesthetics," "Zombie Aesthetics," and time travel. The use of fake band stories and the duo taking photos of themselves as these groups was compared by critic Amanda Farah to the project Strange Little Girls (2001) by Tori Amos.
Like past Prince Rama releases, Top 10 Hits of the End of the World follows the idea of the "Now Age," where a period or moment becomes lost once it is named a "now age." Taraka described recreating the apocalypse as "illusive" as remaking "the now" in that they "both exist in a suspended moment which links the End with the Eternal." In regards to an idea of the LP of the combination of a utopia and an apocalypse, she explained that a utopia is a "No Place" based on Thomas More's definition of the term and that pop music involves ending humanity and "place" in order to create a utopian viewpoint: "In its obsession with hi-fi, it strives to eradicate all traces of place, and creates an alternative reality where all sounds are polished and isolated in an echoless paradise. In its obsession with image, it strives to eradicate all traces of aging and mortal imperfection and strives to create an iconic ideal; replicable, untouchable, immortal."
Composition Top 10 Hits of the End of the World is a psychedelic indie drone rock album in the style of music from the cassette tape compilation C86 (1986) using raga compositional structures and a "Hindu atmosphere," wrote Paul Lester of The Guardian. As with previous Prince Rama albums, Top 10 Hits of the End of the World follows an acid-influenced jam band style that contains tribal digital drum sounds, what writer Stuart Stubbs described as "cyclic" structures, rototoms, eastern percussion, Casio-style sounds, Sanskrit-style chants, analog synthesizers, and several filters of reverb, echo, and distortion.
In making the music of Top 10 Hits of the End of the World, Prince Rama was influenced by pop, pop punk, and synthpop music from a variety of nations such as Arabian territories, France, Sweden, and Cambodia. Since most of Top 10 Hits of the End of the World was recorded in Seattle, Prince Rama garnered influences from the works of American rock band Nirvana. The album also features elements of new wave, cosmic disco, grunge, what the press release described as "tribal goth," "motorcycle rock," and "ghost-modern glam."
Top 10 Hits of the End of the World has garnered comparisons to artists such as Bananarama, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Haysi Fantayzee, Kajagoogoo, and Zodiac Mindwarp by critics. A writer for The Phoenix categorized it in the same league as the works of artist M.I.A. due to its combination of "odd modalities and ceremonial percussion" with elements of pop music, club music, "sexy gothic atmospheres," and "repetitive hooks." Willcoma of Tiny Mix Tapes wrote, "played at the proper volume, the songs imbue a towering miasma of spacey fascination and perhaps even kitsch-love." He wrote that the duo's love for psychedelic and synthesizer music on the LP is "fetishistic like so many other pillagers of those key periods, but it is (as with Ariel Pink) too restless to be a calculated homage."
Fictional group biographies and song information Guns of Dubai was an Arabian musical act who posed as members of the military government of the House of Sabah. Information about who was in the group remains unknown; the members had to hide their identity due to laws by the United Arab Emirates government that prohibited women playing music publicly. Their music was distributed through bootleg cassette tapes packaged in artillery. When the apocalypse came, they died from a gunshot wound. Their track that appears on Top 10 Hits of the End of the World is "Blade of Austerity," which, as Adam Kivel, a journalist for Consequence of Sound, analyzed consists of a snake charming synthesizer and a "lumbering bass." I.M.M.OR.T.A.L.I.F.E., or Inner Messages Morphing Over Resonant Time, Always Loving Infinitely Free and Everlasting, was an English group that created hymnal dance music that heavily influenced love and sexual activity. The members of the group went by the anonymous I.M.M.OR.T.A.L.I.F.E. name due to a sex cult in London-based underground nightclubs that took place in the early 1980s. The group was frozen to death following a thirteen-day orgy when the world ended. Their song “Those Who Live For Love Will Live Forever” appears on Top 10 Hits of the End of the World and is a Giorgio Moroder-style disco trackYoung, Martyn (November 12, 2012). "Prince Rama – Top 10 Hits Of The End Of The World". musicOMH. Retrieved July 11, 2017. that uses lyrics like “I am here/ I love you” to show how crucial love is in an apocalypse. It was described by reviewer Ryan Reed as "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell "after a handful of Ambien." The Nu Fighters was a duo of musicians under the stage names Maxx and Midnight whose song "No Way Back" won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1989. The members were parts of an underground outlaw motorcycle gang in Los Angeles where they were involved in criminal activity such as murdering, pimping, prostituting, and grave robbing. It was not until they landed on America's Most Wanted list for six cases of murder that their activity became known to a wider public. Thus, they committed suicide by riding a motorcycle off a cliff. Rage Peace was a protest band formed in the early 1990s. Described by the press release as "the Bob Dylans of a whole generation of angry youth," Rage Peace made tracks that mainly used elements of pop music in their instrumentals and had lyrics that promoted violence. The group started what was known as the Rage Peace movement, a series of organized events that involved violence and destruction of buildings and cars. By the time the apocalypse came, the members were found dead in a limousine that was on fire. Their song for Top 10 Hits of the End of the World, "So Destroyed," consists of synthesizer bongos performing dub rhythms and a "swanky" bass riff, wrote Kivel. Taohaus was a group of what the press release described as "radical rejected architects" who built a monastery in the Black Forest. Their style of architecture was a combination of modernism and the "simplicity" of the religion Taoism, which was amplified by the music they created for worshipping. One of the worshipping pieces they wrote was “Receive." As the press release explains, it is "a mantra for all those wishing to clear their minds and cast a light on their shadows." The track borrows elements of progressive rock in terms of how it builds towards a climax, analyzed Reed. Members of Taohaus were burned to death from a tree that was struck by lightning when the end of the world came. Goloka was a duo of sisters Latara Mangareshkar and Rasha Bahsel who sang for the soundtracks of more than 900 bollywood films and garnered the name of "the jewels on the crown of Indian cinema." The name Goloka was synonymous with the term Bollywood during the 1960s. The duo died from smoke suffocation while they attended a screening of "their largest production to date," since a frame of the film burned and turned the whole theatre on fire.