Best Music of 2008

This is a much more idiosyncratic sampling than usual, for the simple reason that I bought very little music this year– probably the least since I started buying my own records. This was a combination of pre-SteelyKid austerity measures (do you know what day care costs these days?), post-SteelyKid lack of time to listen to music, and, most recently, a nearly full hard drive on my home computer (which will be replaced soon-ish, so I’m trying to eke out a few more weeks with this one).

Anyway, here are the five-star songs from 2008:

• “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You ,” Black Kids. I only bought the single, because there’s only so much of this style I can take, but this one songs is brilliant.
• “You Can’t Count On Me,” Counting Crows. Probably the most coherent song on what was a ridiculously overwrought album, even by the standards of Counting Crows.
• “I Will Possess Your Heart,” Death Cab For Cutie. Creepiest. Song. Ever.
• “Your New Twin Sized Bed,” Death Cab For Cutie. Probably my favorite song off the album.
• “Mother Mary,” Foxboro Hottubs. A really fun song from a moonlighting Green Day.
• “Lost In The Light,” The Heavenly States. You probably haven’t heard this, but you should.
• “Sequestered In Memphis,” The Hold Steady. Makes no legal sense whatsoever, but it’s catchy. The best song on the record by a good margin.
• “Waterfall,” James. I’m probably overrating it, but I first heard it while watching the sun rise in the hospital parking lot after a donut run on the morning SteelyKid was born.
• “I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory,” Kathleen Edwards. Just for the lyric “You’re the Great One, I’m Marty McSorley.”
• “Time To Pretend ,” MGMT. As with the Black Kids, I only bought the single, because there’s only so much of this I can take. This one song is terrific, though.
• “Do The Panic ,” Phantom Planet. Earworm of the year, hands down.
• “Supernatural Superserious ,” R.E.M. I seem to be writing “best song off a disappointing album” a lot this year.
• “Fix It,” Ryan Adams. A pretty solid album from Adams and the Cardinals. This is my favorite, but most of the songs are good.
• “A-Punk,” Vampire Weekend. Ivy League Afro-pop. I liked this album quite a bit, but they seemed to be struggling to fill it out. It’ll be interesting to see what they do for a follow-up.
• “Glad It’s Over,” Wilco. Jeff Tweedy is back from rehab, and writing songs again, as opposed to whatever the hell he was doing for the last couple of albums. I liked this enough to buy the whole Heroes soundtrack in order to get it.

Notable four-star songs include “Many Shades of Black” by the Raconteurs, about half the songs on the My Morning Jacket album, and pretty much the whole DapTone Records sampler. Oh, and “My Medicine” by Snoop Dogg.

I bought so little music this year that I hesitate to dub anything “Album of the Year.” If I had to, though, I would go with the Death Cab record, which is solid start to finish, and was the only album to get two five-star ratings. The TV On the Radio record seems to be the critical darling this year, but I wasn’t blown away. It’s good, but not brilliant.

My favorite song of the year would be a toss-up between “Do the Panic” and “Glad It’s Over.”

So, what am I missing? What should I fill that last 50MB of disk space with?