Top 10 of the 2000s: Foreword and further reading

Further reading:
* Ghostly International’s non-Ghostly 110 of the 2000s
* Fact Magazine's Top 100 albums
* Pitchfork's Top 20
* Guardian Top 10
* Stylus Decade (coming soon)
* Noughties notes on musical fragmentation
* Fact's 10 house producers of the decade
* Blissblog's 9 09s
* Guide's People Who Ruined the Decade
* Why Kek-W has no favourite album of the decade
* Howay Howey! Salaam Ali! Allez Le Sulk – City team of the decade

A dizaine of tracks from the decade was something I was already thinking of doing by late 08, ignoring the pertinent other asking why would some unvalidated, isolate no-mark want to stroke off his top 10 as if it mattered to anyone other than himself. A top 10 of albums was never on the cards due to my oh-so time-poor modus operandi for most long-players these days generally being have a quick skirt through, find the 3 or 4 (but often just 1) tracks I like and rip to the e-library.

Yet while always recognising the exercise’s whiff of futility I still wanted to quantify the one-off moments of intensity, ad hoc communal moments versus private reverie, the trade-off between that moment and how long you go on genuinely feeling it, even remembering it maybe even acknowledging how much it was liked because the virtual milieu within my online bookmarks told me to; liking just one thing from a band (Kings of Leon’s deliciously feral Red Morning Light at our wedding did not enamour me to their work, for example, and in any case the middle managers wanted in). Again, iTunes-style listening comes into play, 30-second blasts of the best bits favour impact songs rather than slow-burners (notably the longer house tunes in the 10 are vinyl treasures).

I get the ‘moments’ where I can now, plugged into the matrix, train and bus rides with the phones on, in the car. The blog and my interest in music are maintained from an amateur/everyman perspective, doing it on the side (after late night shifts and childcare), keeping track when I can. Anyhow I built it up over the course of 2009 and hopefully it offers decent personalised histories of each tune.

With thanks to Marc, Corky and Fish for their contributions.

[Top 10 here, the also-rockers here]