'Tis the Season

After a long day of fighting holiday crowds and insanely cold weather, I came home to find an e-mail from my advisor sitting in my inbox.

"Thought you might be interested. Hope you're doing well . . . -- TAS"

Smiling, I clicked on the attached link. It brought me to a blog entry entitled "The Best Music of 2008." Oh yeah, I thought. It is about that time.

As the days dwindle closer to the end of December and each of us takes stock of the past year, the powers that be (or any schmuck with a blog or a column) in the music world do the same, releasing lists of the top (in their opinion) albums and singles of the year.

Although it may seem arbitrary to find out what did or did not make so-and-so's list, oftentimes the music that they choose represents music that was noticeable, if not notable. It is music that caused some kind of a stir; music that affected the culture as a whole, connected us, changed us.

When you think about it, music defines a year as much as the major events that happened, the clothes people wore or fads in pop culture. Like a soundtrack to a movie, each year lives and is forever remembered in the context of certain songs.

In the same way that the context we hear music in personalizes that music, so I think the music that accompanies our lives molds and changes us. Did we know joy before "Singin' in the Rain" or loneliness before "Piano Man?" Maybe so, but hearing those songs for the first time is like the difference between seeing a picture of a skydiver and feeling the rush of air against your skin and the thrill and terror in your stomach as you plummet towards the ground. Hearing those songs, we are Dorothy, stepping into bright technicolor and changing our view of our grey beginnings forever.

So what are your top picks of 2008?

Here are links to a few different versions of the top albums and singles of 2008:

the Slate list
Rolling Stone's list
Rolling Stone's list, part 2
Sondre Lerche's list (he has interesting things to say, though he doesn't seem too fond of music journalists...oh well)