All across the internet looks-back at 2008’s music are giving way to predictions for 2009. Time then for some lists other people have made:
Sasha Frere-Jones has 21 songs and 28 albums with the top spots going to Lil Wayne’s A Milli and Bon Iver respectively. He also wrote a bit about some of his choices on his New Yorker blog. There’s plenty I hadn’t listened to much and of those I’ve since checked out Lil Wayne, Erykah Badu, Flying Lotus and White Denim all sound good.
Last.fm’s collective best-of lacks the personal touch of individual bloggers but there has been some effort put into collating the material and attaching some commentary and being able to see the actual listening figures, and trend-lines, for the various artists and songs is interesting.
Michael Surtees added a lovely visualisation to his list again this year plotting the credibility/embarrassment of his favourites against the point in the year he listened to them. At the top is Portishead with Third, and album that despite quite wanting to and giving it plenty of chances, I haven’t been able to like all that much
The Quietus have spread their list out over 15 pages which is really annoying to read and link to, but by giving the number-1 spot to The Bug they’re nearly forgiven as I really like the album and think he deserves the publicity.
Drowned in Sound have a top 50 with commentary on the top 5. They agreed with me and gave their number-1 spot to M83 but there’s been plenty else in the list I’ve since listened to and really enjoyed.
Bobby of Kitsune Noir has picked 15 albums in no particular order including Cut Copy and Lykke Li that I liked. The inclusion of tracks from each alongside interesting and useful comments is nice, I appreciate when extra effort is put in. I can fully understand not wanting to order choices, but not picking one as an outright favourite seems a little bit of a cop-out.
I found a few more lists but these were the ones I found most interesting.
