Top 50

Oh yeah sweet jesus they should re-name the first half of January 'top 50 time', every single publication, website and critic worth its weight in promotional frisbees feels compelled to put into order the albums that happened to have a release date within the same 12 month period. It's amazing. How can one album, one artist, some up an entire year? It's like saying "What mood were you in in 2008?" the answer is always going to be "lots of different ones", "but what was your TOP mood of the year?"... its stupid. But whatever, who cares, it does give a good idea on who actually made a decent record, and its an excellent way to make sure you didn't miss any good records while you were too busy working/masturbating/drinking/fucking another year away. If you can't be bothered to look around to see who 'won' 2008 I've compiled some edited highlights for you here, as well as coming up with my own top 10.

At first I thought that Rolling Stone, in a bizzare attempt to stay on-top of the ever changing musical climate, had asked Brad Pitt to pick their top 50 albums of the year for them. Luckily I was mistaken and they stayed very firmly IN 'the box' by asking all their critics instead. TV on the Radio came out on top, with their latest 'dear science' (as an interesting side note, did you know that during the Concrete and Glass festival in October the venue that TV on the Radio were supposed to play fell through, so they were hastily re-booked to play at Cargo?!) although the whole top 50 completely discredits itself with the inclusion of Kaiser Chiefs at 21 and the Jonas Brothers at 40, seriously. TV on the Radio also top the lists of The Guardian, Spin, the New York Times and no doubt countless more. The other big contender for 'winner' of 2008 has to be Fleet Foxes, who sail to the top of Pitchfork and Mojo's lists and generally show up a lot in most peoples top 5/top 10, coming in at 2 in Rough Trade East, Filter and Q. They also notably top the Hype Machines list of Albums. Although I love the Fleet Foxes record, its a pretty depressing thought for me that it could in some way "sum up" 2008, as nice as it is I dont think 2008 was that chilled out. Other albums that seem to be featuring way more in these lists than they were on anyone I knows i-pod are Portishead's 'Third', Bon Iver's 'For Emma, Forever Ago' and that Glasvegas record, all of which I think are only in matching the depressed mood of the journalists doing the lists wondering if they were going to have a job when they came back to work in January. One of my favourite and most agreeable top 10's is from the NME who are one of the only publications noting the GENIUS of the Mystery Jets record, and reppin Friendly Fires as a late contender and Metronomy to boot. At the top of their pile is MGMT, which when I think back through the year is one of the only bands who I think i've truly started and ended the year with. They've had a constant stream of big singles so they've been constantly on the radio, and to be fair the album doesn't have a bad track on it. They've also still got huge remixes coming out of their tunes, most notably 80kidz and Soulwax's efforts on 'kids', which shows a continued interest in them by them kids in the clubs (and them kids on the blogs).  Away from the album and to the live circuit I saw them in tiny venues in Texas at the start of the year and then in huge tents at V and Reading in the summer, which is always amazing to see a band do, in fact, the hype and the atmosphere watching them at SXSW was amazing, we had to break into the gig through the backstage door and pretend to be the official film crew for them ha, there was literally 500 people outside trying to get in. I discussed this whole thing last night with Kieran from the View, and he's also saying that MGMT is up there as one of the best, and in the Hype Machine's end of year charts they are officially the most blogged band of the year. So yeah, NME, I think you might be right, MGMT is my album of the year. Here is an attempt at the rest of the top 10.

1.MGMT - Time to Pretend

2.Mystery Jets - 21

3.Late of the Pier - Fantasy Black Channel

4.Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires

5.Hot Chip - Made in the Dark

6.Cage the Elephant - Cage the Elephant

7.Weezer - The Red Album

8.Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

9.Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

10.Kings of Leon - Only by the Night

Oh god that took forever and I'm sure I've missed something obvious. Also fully not caring that that could actually have been the NME top 10, not trying to look cool those are the albums I've enjoyed the most and listened to the most in 2008. As an extra note I might edit this upon hearing the records that have been in lots of lists that I haven't heard yet (TV on the Radio, Lil Wayne, Bon Iver) and other records that I just haven't got round to picking up yet (Laura Marling, Santogold, No Age)...

So come on then, what's your top 10? or just top record of the year? What did I miss (other than that SICK Jonas Brothers record - thanks Rolling Stone)?