Best of...

Here are my list of favourite songs and albums from 2009. The one thing I realized from making this list is that I didn't listen to many whole albums and more individual songs (damn you Zune!) and that my taste in music has expanded considerably over the course of the year. Also, per usual, my list doesn't match up with any other list I've read this year save for the inclusion of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in my top songs list. And Miike Snow and Franz Ferdinand. Everything else is just proof of how not indie I really am.

Top 15 Songs (In No Particular Order)

• Emasculate Me - The Cribs
• Don't Upset the Rhythm - The Noisettes
• Remedy - Little Boots
• Never Gonna Happen - Lily Allen
• Dr. John - Mika*
• Tigerlilly - La Roux
• French Navy - Camera Obscura
• Not the Only Person - The Rumble Strips
• Twilight Omens - Franz Ferdinand
• Animal - Miike Snow
• Dimestore Diamond - Gossip
• Zero - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• The Golden Age - The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
• Seattle - BPA
• Morning Light - Ida Maria

Top 5 Albums (In a Kind of Order)**

1. Miike Snow - Miike Snow
2. The Boy Who Knew Too Much - Mika
3. It's Not Me, It's You - Lily Allen
4. Tonight - Franz Ferdinand
5. La Roux - La Roux

Honorable Mentions for Top Albums

• Fortress 'Round My Heart - Ida Maria
• Ignore the Ignorant - The Cribs
• Fruit - The Asteroids Galaxy Tour

Albums I Wish Had Been Better (Or That I Would Have Liked to Have Liked Better)

• Quicken the Heart - Maximo Park
• It's Frightening - White Rabbits
• Humbug - Arctic Monkeys
• Strict Joy - The Swell Season
• The Resistance - Muse

And finally an explanation for the album order: As with my choice for my favourite Mika song, I didn't want to be too obvious in picking my #1, so I went with the most consistently really good album. From there I ordered the albums according to a) how consistently good they were and b) how many tracks I consider to be above par. Hence why Franz Ferdinand comes after Lily Allen (the entire end of the album being crap as compared to the one or two tracks being not very good.) As mentioned in my foot note for this section, there are albums that I probably would have included if I had listened to them in their entirety :cough: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Noisettes, Gossip:cough: and some I'm sure I would have included if they had been released in the US this year :cough:VV Brown, Little Boots:cough: So there's the logic for my top 5 albums. There is no logic for my top 15 songs because I basically just picked songs that I listened to a lot that were released in 2009.


*I picked this based on the fact that a) "We Are Golden" is too obvious and b) it's the second most listened to song according to Zune
**The problem with this category is that a lot of the albums I would like to included (I'm sure) haven't been released in the US. That and the fact that I didn't listen to many whole albums from 2009, just individual songs. I plan on emending that for some artists, but again I'm limited by what has and hasn't been released in the US.