Fifty Best Songs of 2008 (Sean, Said The Gramophone)

Here are my 50 favourite songs of 2008: the ones I really, really, really, really like. I decided not to include any artist twice, nor any songs from albums I heard last year.

The best way to browse this list is to click the little arrow beside each song and then listen as you read. The things you like you can then download by right- or ctrl-clicking with your mouse. Please buy albums, singles and EPs by bands that you enjoy.

You can also download complete zips of the fifty songs here, via Mediafire.

Antony & the Johnsons - “Another World”

2008 did not have a “Hey Ya!,” a “Crazy in Love,” a “1 Thing” - a song so essential that it felt like a new page ought to be added to the calendar. (If anything, it had “Paper Planes”.) So my favourite song of the year is not a dancefloor-filler, not an anthem; it is just my favourite. I don't know why “Another World” seems so essential to me, this December... Whether it's Antony's moth- and butterfly-wing voice, the piano like first snow. Whether it's a response to the Year of Obama. “Hope” and “Change” seem like true and important things, this year, things we crave and wish to put in our briefcases, but I sense how fragile they are, and how dreamed. Of course maybe it's just that this is a pretty, sad song. Maybe it's Antony's microphone, full of tears. [buy]

Lykke Li - “Dance Dance Dance”

In February I wrote a premature valentine: Were you born in Sweden? Wait, what? A Portuguese mountaintop!? Was it cold? Sure, I'll hold on to it for you. What do you want me to do? Rattle it? And stamp my foot too? Are we recording a song? Who's that? That's a very large saxophone. [buy]

Rye Rye with MIA - “Tic Toc” There is no single component that makes this song sing. It is, yes, like a clock. Rye Rye slow-loping, MIA tick-tocking, Busy Signal hey-heying, zither-thing glittering, and all of us setting our time to its diamond-hard 6-jewel movement. (Previously.) [MySpace]

This probably doesn't even need to be said, but you are STRONGLY URGED to go check out the 47 other brilliant picks over at Said The Gramophone →

- Sean Michaels