Bruno Mars, Ke$ha and Rihanna

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We wait for it every year:  DJ Earworm’s United State of Pop’s mash-up of the previous 12 months top hits.

[More after the jump...]

Here’s a way to see how much time you spent listening to pop music this year: see if you can name all the songs in the 2012 “Shine Brighter” remix.  Among the ones we caught were Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know,” Lumineers’ “Ho Hey,” Rihanna’s “Diamonds,” Katy Perry’s “Wide Awake,” fun.’s “We Are Young,” Ke$ha’s “Die Young,” Adele’s “Set Fire To The Rain” and Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out Of Heaven,” Maroon 5’s “Payphone,” Nicki Minaj’s “Starships,”and, of course, Psy’s “Gangnam Style.”

Unless we’re missing it, we’re not hearing Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe" or Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."

This year’s comes chock-ful of hits, nonetheless, but in a very vanilla wrapping. Lyrics appear on the screen that looks like the inside of a lava lamp instead of showing select scenes from the videos as he’s done in the past, so it’s  a much less interesting viewing experience. Maybe there was a clearance issue. Plus, many of this year’s biggest hits were less dance-oriented so that may have affected the overall feel.

This is still a fun way to relieve the year in four minutes or less, but it doesn’t have the pizazz of last year’s mash-up “World Go Boom.” But, of course, DJ Earworm can only work with the material he’s given.

Some folks on YouTube are crying foul on this one and calling it the work of an imposter...in part because of the lack of images and because this is showing up about a week before the video usually hits.  We don’t know if that’s the case or that DJ Earworm was feeling a little uninspired this year. If another one shows up , we’ll be sure to post it.