Many seem to love this silly annual list, but every year I tend to get the same two primary responses. My music-nerd friends (mostly music writers) respond by exclaiming, “How dare you exclude that amazing folk record from the Netherlands!” (or, alternatively, “How dare you not include more rap music!”) while my non-music-nerd friends write back saying, “Once again, I’ve never heard of anything on your list.” As a semi-respectable music journalist, there are lots of records that probably should be on my list and aren’t, but in the end I just choose the records and songs that got the most face time around my home office (as measured by number of plays in my iTunes). So even though I could easily list about a hundred records that I genuinely liked in 2008 (this was a great year for music, don’t let anyone tell you different!), here are the forty albums I listened to the most.

1) Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
2) Beach House, Devotion
3) Deerhunter, Microcastle
4) High Places, High Places
5) Fuck Buttons, Street Horrrsing
6) Portishead, Third
7) Department of Eagles, In Ear Park
No Age, Nouns
9) Lykke Li, Youth Novels
10) My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
11) M83, Saturdays = Youth
12) Gang Gang Dance, St. Dymphna
13) Abe Vigoda, Skeleton
14) Crystal Stilts, Alight of Night
15) Glass Candy, B/E/A/T/B/O/X
16) The Breeders, Mountain Battles
17) Dungen, 4
18) Kasai Allstars, In the 7th Moon…
19) Averkiou, Throwing Sparks
20) Emmylou Harris, All I Intended To Be
21) The New Year, The New Year
22) Women, Women
23) School of Seven Bells, Alpinisms
24) Cat Power, Jukebox
25) Growing, All the Way
26) Atlas Sound, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
27) Stephen Malkmus, Real Emotional Trash
28) Vivian Girls, Vivian Girls
29) Ponytail, Ice Cream Spiritual
30) The Dodos, Visiter
31) Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
32) Hercules and Love Affair, Hercules and Love Affair
33) The Duke Spirit, Neptune
34) R.E.M., Accelerate
35) Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Lie Down in the Light
36) Blank Dogs, On Both Sides
37) Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
38) Juana Molina, Un Día
39 Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree
40) Silver Jews, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea

Fleet Foxes photo by David Belisle for V54.

KEYWORDS: Music