It’s time to stop living a lie.
Over the last few years I’ve indulged in the annual ritual of posting a list of my top albums of the year. But the truth is, in this age of internet-induced ADD, of shuffling iPhones and thousands of tracks at my fingertips, I rarely listen to a given album all the way through more than once, and it has gotten harder and harder for me to say a given album is better than another. The atomic unit of music has once again, as in days of yore, become the song rather than the album. While I don’t disagree that a set of songs can become more than the sum of its parts, as a songwriter my fundamental appreciation for my beloved medium rests at this very basic level — does this song, standing on its own, result in head-nods, pulse-throbs, or eye-sobs?
To that end I’ve put aside the pretensions of a top albums list and gone back to my roots: the mixtape. You can take a listen to a sample of each of my favorite songs of 2010 in the playlist below, and if you are so inclined, purchase each track individually (I should mention that doing so will also send a small pittance in the direction of your humble author).
Alternatively, if you value speed over supporting your friendly neighborhood blogger, and don’t mind spending $18.03 to feed the Apple monster, you can buy all 17 tunes with one click on iTunes.