Top Lists for 2008 12/6/08
Music
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Top Ten

It’s that time of the year, my favorite time of the year. Not because of Christmas, although that’s nice. No, it’s because of this webpage, Fimoculous’s Lists of Lists. This is the third year in a row that I’ve been enriched and excited about this page. Essentially it’s a collection of the lists from around the internet.

Lists such as Pitchfork’s Top 40 Music Videos, Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year, Yahoo’s Top Searches, Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Entertainers of the Year, This Recording’s Top 20 Albums, Paste’s Top 50 Albums, Yahoo Movies’ Top 10 Trailers, Multinational Monitor’s 10 Worst Corporations, and NYT’s 100 Notable Books.

However, the best part is the music collection, in which I’d check out the top albums of the year that I’ve missed. I compare and contrast and the albums that fall in genres of music that I enjoy (of which there are many) that I haven’t heard of, then I check them out and if I like them, then I’m ecstatic because I’ve found a hidden treasure I would’ve never known about if it weren’t for Fimoculous’s lists.

I decided to add my own personal Top 20 favorite albums of 2008, based on statistics gathered by my charts page on Last.fm.

  1. The Raveonettes – Lust Lust Lust
  2. Shiny Toy Guns – Season Of Poison
  3. Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
  4. Shocking Pinks – Shocking Pinks
  5. Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid
  6. Glasvegas – Glasvegas
  7. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
  8. MGMT – Oracular Spectacular
  9. You Me At Six – Take Off Your Colours
  10. Santogold – Santogold
  11. The Ting Tings – We Started Nothing
  12. Creature – No Sleep At All
  13. The Sword – Gods Of The Earth
  14. Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s – Animal
  15. Kings of Leon – Only By The Night
  16. Stars – Sad Robots EP
  17. Justice – Planisphère
  18. M83 – Saturdays = Youth
  19. Snow Patrol – A Hundred Million Suns
  20. Titus Andronicus – The Airing Of Grievances

By no means are these the best albums of 2008 period, but my own personal favorites based on the limited amount of music I can cram into my life. I was kind of surprised to see Shocking Pinks up there. I didn’t realize that I liked that album as much as I apparently did. The top album on my list, The Raveonettes’s Lust Lust Lust, is such a superb album, even now I’m not sick of it and tend to go back to it every now and then to enjoy it all over again.

As for individual tracks, here’s my top 20 favorite songs for 2008:

  1. MGMT – Pieces Of What
  2. Elbow – One Day Like This
  3. Los Campesinos! – You! Me! Dancing!
  4. Vampire Weekend – Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
  5. The Raveonettes – Dead Sound
  6. The Raveonettes – Lust
  7. M83 – Kim & Jessie
  8. M83 – Skin of the Night
  9. Vampire Weekend – A-Punk
  10. Shiny Toy Guns – It Became A Lie On You
  11. The Raveonettes – Hallucinations
  12. Shiny Toy Guns – Season of Love
  13. Vampire Weekend – I Stand Corrected
  14. Vampire Weekend – Walcott
  15. Vampire Weekend – The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance
  16. The Raveonettes – Black Satin
  17. Vampire Weekend – Mansard Roof
  18. The Ting Tings – Shut Up and Let Me Go
  19. Vampire Weekend – One (Blake’s Got a New Face)
  20. Vampire Weekend – Campus

Every year is filled with opportunities to enjoy so much good music that it is almost overwhelming. 2008 was no different, and I sincerely look forward to next year’s treasure troves of great music.