A list of music (and a bland title)

Hello again friends.

10 days into 2008 and I bring you my first piece of information for the year that you can take away and use (free of charge) in your daily lives: white chocolate toffee pops are awful. There you go, live well my friends.

In other non-news I thought I’d give you a run down of my favourite music of 2007. I did this using the very scientific manner of creating an iTunes playlist of songs released in 2007 and with a rating of 4 or more stars.

The 21 songs (as ordered by play count) are:

• Candyman – Christina Aguilera (actually this one was a music video I purchased from the iTunes store, but same diff right?)
• Love Rain (Coffeshop mix) – Jill Scott and Mos Def - Collaborations
• Rag and Bone – The White Stripes – Icky Thump
• Catch Hell Blues – The White Stripes – Icky Thump
• On Call – Kings of Leon – Because of the Times
• Like I Love You – Maximo Park – Radio 1 Established 1967
• Trunk – Kings of Leon – Because of the Times
• I’m Slowly Turning Into You – The White Stripes – Icky Thump
• All That She Wants – The Kooks – Radio 1 Established 1967
• Don’t Get Me Wrong – Lily Allen – Radio 1 Established 1967
• Careless Whisper – Gossip – Radio 1 Established 1967
• Ray of Light – Natasha Beddingfield – Radio 1 Established 1967
• My Body is a Cage – The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
• Steady As She Goes – Corinne Bailey Rae – Radio 1 Established 1967
• If You’re Into It – Flight of the Conchords – The Distant Future EP (Business Time would be here too but I didn’t want it on high rotation)
• Black Thumbnail – Kings of Leon – Because of the Times
• No No No – Ghostface Killah – Hidden Darts (and this is looking to become my song for summer 08)
• Stronger – Kanye West – Graduation
• In the Mood – Talib Kweli – Ear Drum
• Say Something – Talib Kweli – Ear Drum
• Country Cousins – Talib Kweli – Ear Drum

All the hip hop is at the bottom because they are fairly new to my collection compared to the other stuff.

I can’t say enough about Radio 1 Established 1967. It’s a brilliant album. The artists were assigned a year between 1967 and 2006 and had to cover one of the top ten songs from Radio 1 in that year. Some covers are brilliant remakes with new styles (Like I Love You, Careless Whisper, All That She Wants), others are straight covers with a good flavour of the new artist (Don’t Get Me Wrong, Ray of Light). Of course some are just awful (as many covers tend to be) like the Streets covering My Song, blech!

Talib Kweli’s Ear Drum may be one of the best albums of the year and definitely the best hip hop album I have heard in a while. And I obviously loved the White Stripes and Kings of Leon new stuff.

Honourable mentions go to Patti Smith, The New Pornographers and Tori Amos.