This year’s first best-of list comes to us from Amazon, which I guess wanted to get a jump on holiday shopping by deeply discounting the albums it found better than the rest way before Black Friday rolled around. Top 50 after the jump, but first, here are a few impressions:
THE GOOD: A top 10 with enough personal favorites (Santogold, No. 2; Al Green’s Lay It Down, No. 4; Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah, No. 7; Estelle’s Shine, No. 8) to make me forgive the obligatory Fleet Foxes inclusion (at No. 3, for real).
THE BAD: Amazon is an e-commerce site, though, and once the list gets into its teens, a few decisions seem to have been arrived at by factoring in both sales and critical appeal. Metallica’s Death Magnetic at No. 19, for example: Surely there were better albums put out by metal bands who were going for a serious image makeover after a string of semi-disastrous albums and a movie that let them get a little to emo? (OK, maybe not.)
THE WHAAA? Yeah, I kind of can’t get over that the first “best of ‘08″ list that I’ve come across so far has Kings Of Leon’s Only By The Night as No. 1. But maybe you’ve found other rundowns out there? Feel free to send them our way.
1. Kings Of Leon, Only By The Night
2. Santogold
3. Fleet Foxes
4. Al Green, Lay It Down
5. Adele, 19
6. Death Cab For Cutie, Narrow Stairs
7. Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part 1: Fourth World War
8. Estelle, Shine
9. Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind
10. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular
11. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
12. Joan As Police Woman, To Survive
13. R.E.M., Accelerate
14. Johnny Flynn, A Larum
15. Duffy, Rockferry
16. Throw Me The Statue, Moonbeams
17. Sigur Ros, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
18. Portishead, Third
19. Metallica, Death Magnetic
20. She & Him, Volume One
21. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
22. Laura Marling, Alas I Cannot Swim
23. T.I., Paper Trail
24. Beck, Modern Guilt
25. M83, Saturdays = Youth
26. The Roy Hargrove Quintet, Ear Food
27. Ashton Shepherd, Sounds So Good
28. B.B. King, One Kind Favor
29. Esperanza Spalding, Esperanza
30. Coldplay, Viva La Vida
31. Ra Ra Riot, The Rhumb Line
32. Thao, We Brave Bee Stings And All
33. TV On The Radio, Dear Science
34. Ting Tings, We Started Nothing
35. The Magnetic Fields, Distortion
36. Little Jackie, The Stoop
37. Amanda Palmer, Who Killed Amanda Palmer
38. Destroyer, Trouble In Dreams
39. Dr. John And The Lower 911, The City That Care Forgot
40. The Helio Sequence, Keep Your Eyes Ahead
41. Think Of One, Camping Shaabi
42. Juno soundtrack
43. The Mighty Underdogs, Droppin’ Science Fiction
44. JJ Grey & Moffro, Orange Blossoms
45. CSS, Donkey
46. Katy Perry, One Of The Boys
47. The Raconteurs, Consolers Of The Lonely
48. Calexico, Carried To Dust
49. Jamie Lidell, Jim
50. Jeff Healey, Mess Of Blues
Best Of 2008 [Amazon]
The Kings of Leon album has been growing and growing on me. I thing it’s pretty rad but it’s not better than Dear Science.
@Al Shipley: Seriously. There is so much to comment on here, but for now let’s go with the Hip-Hop representation, or lack thereof. Seriously, Paper Trail?!@# Yeah I bought it. And yeah I bump it, but it is way too uneven/top-heavy to be the lone ranger for Hip-Hop on this list.
Also, there are way too many discs on here that lose steam after four or five tracks. [I'm looking at you Beck, Duffy, and The Raconteurs] This is a Best “Albums” list right? Whatever. Too each his own.
KOL is growing on me as well…the first 3 tracks are solid out of the gate, the others take time…
Racontuers are much lower on this list than they deserve…
As an Amazon editor who contributed to this list, allow me to provide a few insights:
* Even though we are an ecommerce site, these picks had zero to do with sales or arrangements with labels. Each editor and some members of our extended music team submitted ballots with what were genuinely their favorite albums of the year. The final list was tabulated from those ballots with no post-voting grooming of the list.
* We didn’t factor in critical appeal or sales and I don’t really see anything on the list after the top ten that would give that impression, with the possible exceptions of Metallica or Coldplay.
* Some of us have pretty mainstream taste. Some have fairly oddball taste. Some listen to no hip-hop. Some people listen to mostly world music. This leads to titles ranking higher on our list than they will on most others and it might lead to other critically acclaimed titles not appearing altogether.
* I did not vote for the Kings of Leon record and it still made it to #1, so it’s not like this list is not something even the people who made it agree with entirely.
* If you want to engage your curiosity further (or just spice up your Friday with a little more mockery), our top songs lists are pretty abnormal, too (Comedy rock in the top ten! More than one Katy Perry song! Oh, the humanity!): [www.amazon.com]
I think “Sex on Fire” is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. When it comes on WOXY while I’m at work I mute it. Same for their crappy song “Crawl.”
I agree with everyone else, the Walkmen record is better than most of the things on that list. But what do I know, my favorite record was Beach House.
OH MY GOD THAT SINGLES LIST IS EVEN WORSE!!
I hate to be the ‘where’s this song’ guy but I’m about to. The Dodos Red and Purple? There are at least 4 better songs of theirs.
No Hold Steady.
No Deerhunter.
Wrong Hercules & Love Affair.
Wrong MGMT.
No Okkervil on either list.
No Titus.
Wrong Ra Ra Riot.
and on and on…………
That list really is kinda crappy. 4realz. Not to mention its about a month too early to announce! They give Kanye the #2 single but his album isnt going to be on the list. Seems weird.
Given what Jeff Reguilon said above, it’s pretty silly to complain about either of these lists and/or marvel at the fact that certain artists are unrepresented. It was a completely subjective poll of non-critics, and I assume that “each editor and some members of our extended music team” is a fairly small group of people. If none (or very few) of them heard or liked the new Deerhunter album, is that such a big deal?
Oh me, too, me, too! That TV on the Radio record is horrible. MY MERCURY’S IN RETROGRADE!!!!!! Shut it, kid. Shut it.
Oh boy. When all the other year-end lists come out next month, it’s going to be so.much.fun here on Idolator.
@DavidWatts: That’s Bloc Party, not TVOTR. And that record suuuuuuuucks.
Also kinda weird to see Paper Trail pretty high up but no Carter III.
Looking at the list, it seems obvious that Metallica was the token metal pick (in a year positively clotted with amazing metal albums, by the way), so it’s no surprise to me at all that they made it just inside the Top 20. They had to make sure there was room for Adele and MGMT in the Top Ten, after all.
Katy Perry wuz robbed.
Maybe i’m still riding the post concert wave, but seriously: No Drive-By Brighter Than Creation’s Dark or Hold Steady Stay Positive? Really?
First: Love Fleet Foxes.
Second: No Walkmen? Hold Steady?
Third: 808s and Heartbreak hasn’t been released yet.
stvspl: …and TV on the Radio should be way higher
Surprised that there is no Vampire Weekend or Death Cab as both those albums were very critically appreciated. Also, was Katy Perry thrown in for irony?
omg can’t believe ____________ wasn’t even on the list while _____________ was ranked so high!
Odd list, but hooray for Esperanza Spalding. That record is lovely.
@2ironic4u: “Narrow Stairs” is at #6.
Hmmm…shows how out-of-touch or rockist or whatever the hell I am ’cause my “top ten” list for the year only includes one album (B.B. King’s One Kind Favor) from Amazon’s top 50.
Then again, I picked Scott Kempner’s Saving Grace as my number one, and included the Hold Steady, the Gaslight Anthem, Alejandro Escovedo and Buddy Guy in the top five (along with King). My token metal entry? Meshuggah’s obzen, which kicks Metallica’s sorry behind seven ways to Sunday….
No Hold Steady, Dodos, Walkmen ftw?
Not the mention KOL was ultra mediocre. And i bet The Killers is going to be pretty good.
I’m glad they remembered Distortion. I feel like everybody else is going to forget that, which is a shame because Drive On Driver is one of my favorite Stephin Merritt compositions ever.
How many of these aren’t actually out yet?
Also, I’ve only heard six of these. And the Jamie Lidell one made me almost throw my speakers out the window. I thought I was more in touch this year…
Um, where is Black Mountain on this list?!
@Wasp vs Stryper: Out back getting high.
The is the best list of records I never want to buy. Thanks Amazon for making things easy.
@AL: I’m glad they remembered Distortion on the albums AND songs list. Although I’m not really sure how it’s a song.