Lol Mike. Joke’s on you, since my list includes My Morning Jacket. But how could you not love an album that sounds like a series of col­orful, brightly lit hall­ways that some­times fill with smoke?

Ben told me I could write this in any tone I want, but since Joel has aggre­sively cor­nered the market with all the humor jokes and junk I’m feeling a bit adrift. I will say this though. Those dudes’ lists are a dis­grace to the pro­fes­sional music writing pro­fes­sion and not simply because they both have My Morning Jacket on there, which is rep­re­hen­sible and the musical equiv­a­lent of a warbly giraffe cooking chitlins, but because, and I didn’t want to say it in a public forum like this but I will because I have a cer­tain com­mitt­ment to the truth, they have no heart and they have no balls.

This top 10 busi­ness is some serious shit. For weeks at a time I sat alone thinking of the order (the very essence of a top 10), won­dering how the smallest shifts in place­ment would affect lake trout mating sea­sons and the mag­netic poles of the planet. Serious shit.

My year in music was an amal­ga­ma­tion of var­ious influ­ences, a col­lec­tion of sur­prises and expected favorites, and the list that resulted from it is (in my esti­ma­tion) a pretty good set of albums.