There's probably a good amount of overlap between my list and that of Rolling Stone or Spin Magazine or whatnot, if you bother to read them at all, but I figure you're here reading this and doing so will at least acquaint you with my taste in music and allow us to better discuss such things in the future. Good in the long run. Anyways, I imagine there are a couple outliers below that you might not have seen very much or at all in your perusal of the year's best as told by the editors of this or that. And maybe I'll be successful in influencing what you listen to next with these selections for the best singles and albums of the last year.Singles of the Year
19. La Roux - "Bulletproof"
18. Neon Indian - "Deadbeat Summer"
17. Phoenix - "1901"
16. Empire of the Sun - "Standing on the Shore"
15. Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys - "Empire State of Mind"
14. Girls - "Lust for Life"
13. Kings of Leon - "Manhattan"
12. St. Vincent - "Actor"
11. Massive Attack - "Psyche (Flash Treatment)"
10. The xx - "Crystalised"
9. Amadou & Mariam - "Sabali"
8. Miike Snow - "Animal"
7. Florence + the Machine - "Dog Days are Over"
6. Dirty Projectors - "Stillness is the Move"
5. Yeasayer - "Ambling Alp"
4. Grizzly Bear - "Two Weeks"
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Zero"
2. Animal Collective - "My Girls"
1. Bat for Lashes - "Daniel"
Brooklyn and New York have in several ways given us the year's best music. They serve as home base for three of the five artists that top the singles list (Brooklyn edges out NYC by getting to claim both Grizzly Bear and Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and New York as a whole was the subject of one of the most successful and catchiest singles of 2009 ("Empire State of Mind"). Honorable Mention goes to the concrete jungles where dreams are made of, then.
Special mention also goes to Solange Knowles for having surprisingly great taste in music, and for recording the year's best cover of a 2009 song, with her mash-up of "Stillness is the Move" and Erykah Badu's "Bag Lady."
Albums of the Year
Honorable Mention: It's Not Me, It's You, Lily Allen
10. Miike Snow, Miike Snow
9. Actor, St. Vincent
8. Walking on a Dream, Empire of the Sun
7. A Woman a Man Walked By, PJ Harvey & John Parish
6. xx, The xx
5. Lungs, Florence + the Machine
4. It's Blitz!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3. Two Suns, Bat for Lashes
2. Veckatimest, Grizzly Bear
1. Merriweather Post Pavillion, Animal Collective
As wonderful as the music from the rest of 2009 really is, it was never able to top the thumping, pulsating and invigorating sounds of Animal Collective's colossal album, which goes to show exactly how stunning the production on it is. They've merged pop and electronic music in precise fashion, yet it feels so free, simultaneously dreamy and danceable. Had this album been released earlier in the last decade, it might have found itself pretty high on Best of the Decade lists, and the musical landscape would probably sound a whole lot different.
R.J.M.
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