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best music of 2008

Dec 11, 2008
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Welcome again to my most consistent blog feature: my favorite music of 2008. As ever, I offer the following disclaimer: this list has absolutely nothing to do with "quality" -- whatever that is -- and reflects only the records that I enjoyed most this year. A musician that I admire a great deal told me, last year around this time, "There is nothing more subjective than a person's taste." I couldn't agree more.

I decided to go up to 15 albums, because I made an effort to listen to a lot more of this year's releases. Subsequently, I fell in a love with more of them.

15. Q-Tip - The Renaissance

14. Girl Talk - Feed The Animals

13. Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

12. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

11. Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - Cardinology

10. Monkey - Journey To The West

9. Counting Crows - Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

8. Matthew Loiacono - Kentucky

7. Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue

6. Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst

5. Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends

4. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

3. She & Him - Volume 1

2. We are Jeneric - In The Parlor With The Moon

1. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings

Counting Crows

Due to the Internet rendering the "single" sort of useless, the top songs are just that. In several cases, I couldn't pick one song that I like most on one of my favorite albums, and thus not all are represented on the top tracks list. I chose 30 songs which I put in alphabetical order because ranking them would be impossible/irrelevant. Play me any one of them right now and I would start rocking out.

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - "Born Into A Light"

Beyonce - "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)"
Erykah Badu - "The Healer (Hip Hop)"
Blu - "Departing Flights"
Bon Iver - "Lump Sum"
Basia Bulat - "In The Night"
Coldplay - "Lost!"
Counting Crows - "Cowboys"
Death Cab for Cutie - "Cath..."
Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal"
Kevin Hume - "The Night of the Velociped"
Kid Sister ft. David Banner - "Family Reunion"
Jenny Lewis - "Acid Tongue"
Leona Lewis - "Bleeding Love"
Lykke Li - "Breaking It Up"
Matthew Loiacono - "Vaults & Crowns"
M83 - "Kim & Jessie"
MGMT - "Electric Feel"
My Brightest Diamond - "Inside A Boy"
Leona Naess - "Swing Swing Gently"
Kate Nash - "Foundations"
Conor Oberst - "Lenders in the Temple"
Princess Mabel - "Dishwasher Boy"
Sigur Ros - "Gobbledigook"
She & Him - "Sentimental Heart"
Vampire Weekend - "The Kids Don't Stand A Chance"
We are Jeneric - "The Leavings"
Saul Williams - "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
Yael Naim - "New Soul"

Special citation goes to Britney Spears's "Womanizer," which is hands-down my most egregiously bad song of the year. It just barely edged out ahead of Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl." Also: the only form in which I find "Love In This Club" tenable is the following, but it's something: