2008 in review: best albums/songs

By Ryan Byrd

personal, music, lists, reviews, websites, recommendations, mixtape
2 Comments

as i mentioned last week, i love lists. i love to make them. i love to read them. i love to talk about them. so, as promised, i’ve made my list of top albums and songs of 2008 (as i do every year). and, as i’ve done the last couple years, i’ve thrown up a quick, super simple website where you can view my list of best albums of 2008.

on the website, you’ll find my best crap of 2008 and then, because i’m completely indecisive and a music listening machine, i have also made the rest of the crap of 2008, which contains the stuff that almost made it, but not quite (well, some of it was not even close to making it, but i like to throw in some albums that may have not been terribly amazing, but they either surprised me that i remotely like them or they just kind of caught my attention at some point).

you’ll notice on there that there’s a couple links where you can download the albums. well, you can’t. 🙂 my christmas gift to my siblings every year (for like 10 years now) is this compilation (which they can download). for the general blog public, though, i like to play nice with mr. riaa and disallow downloading the albums.

BUT…i do want to offer you all a small christmas gift. i have also compiled the best crap of 2008: the songs. you can download this album…IF…you leave a comment saying that you want it. in that case, i will shoot you an email with the download link. the album is good and, best of all (for anyone who is anal about their itunes library like i am), it comes complete with album artwork and all the correct metadata (album name, artist names, date, track numbers, genre, etc). that’s a pretty good deal. so, leave a comment and i’ll hook you up.

one final note…since i like reading lists so much, i thought i would offer some links of other music sites online that i (semi) frequent with their best of 2008 lists. overwhelmingly, the critics loved tv on the radio’s dear science and fleet foxes’ self-titled debut. to see the full lists, here’s some links (with their #1 album).

rolling stone: dear science (tv on the radio)

pitchfork: fleet foxes (fleet foxes)

paste magazine: volume one (she & him)

relevant magazine: for emma, forever ago (bon iver)

amazon editors’ list: only by the night (kings of leon)

spin magazine: dear science (tv on the radio)

stereogum: fleet foxes (fleet foxes)

filter magazine: oracular spectacular (mgmt)

mtv: dear science (tv on the radio)

i am fuel, you are friends: n/a (not ranked)

i guess i’m floating: fleet foxes (fleet foxes)

metacritic: welcome to mail (amadou & mariam)