My 2008 List (An Intro)

Well, crap. I've been trying to put together a top 25 list for 2008 for the past several weeks, and, I hate to say it... I just can't do it. In my opinion, 2008 was a pretty bad year for music, and about as disappointing a year as I can remember.

Much of it was my own fault - I spent nearly a third of the year working full-time on the Obama campaign and the Martin campaign in Georgia, and not listening to much in the way of music. As a result, I didn't have much time to discover a whole lot of music after August, or even to listen to the music that I already had.

That said, I don't think it's fair to say that it's ALL my fault. Many - and I do mean many - of the albums that I looked forward to this year were truly, sadly, terribly disappointing. And even if they weren't bad (and the Crooked Fingers album was pretty bad), many were just plain mediocre (I'm lookin' at you, Now or Heaven).

So my list is a little different than usual this year, and a little shorter. The most striking difference is the fact that I'm not doing any actual numerical ranking. Why? Making decisions as to relative rankings is hard even in a good year, and requires subjective determinations based on my individual relationship with each album. And, as I said, I'm just not close enough to any of these albums this year to be able to have strong enough opinions.

There were, however, a number of individual songs that managed to connect with me this year, even during campaign season. This was likely due to the fact that the majority of my listening over the last few months was in the car, during my 10-minute drive to my office. With only a few spare minutes each day, I tended to just listen to the songs I was digging at any given time, rather than whole albums.

So instead of starting with my top songs list, I'll actually post that list last this year, since it's probably the truer measure of the music I listened to this year. And I also have a separate list of my most disappointing albums of the year. I really wish this list weren't so long.

So, err, yeah. That's all my way of saying the list starts tonight, and will continue over the next few days.