So, when my iPod crapped out, I lost many playlists which were 100% optimized and perfect and awesome and making them made me happy and losing them still makes me wince. Also, by losing those playlists, I lost lots of MP3s of songs I picked up that I had no other copy of and no album for. As such, many of the awesome songs of the decade are lost to me and my list of my favorite songs is doomed to being very incomplete.

Lucklily, I didn't rely upon the MP3 file format for most of the albums I have had along with me this decade. For those, I have enough of them handy to be fairly sure my list of favorites is pretty complete. I am sure I will have one or two pop-up out of the ether and wish I had included them, but alas, it is not possible to know when, where, who and how many, so I will just let it go.

In lieu of a completely thorough listing of all of the finest music of the last 10 years, you will have to settle for a pretty complete list of albums for now, and by end of year, a list of (and tracklists for) my favorite playlists and free-standing songs.

As I have said many times now, this was an excellent decade for music. I have never listened to more music, nor have I had such a long stretch of being able to count on something new and very interesting entering my ears every few weeks. I know no one gives a shit either way, but I try to limit this list only to actual albums released as new in this decade (though on some, it is possible I have the date wrong and I got some reissue and don't realize it.) There are actually just as many awesome re-issues and collections that I came into in the Oughts, but I can't mix them into this list because nothing new this decade was better than John Coltrane's Interstellar Space, for one; or The Queen Is Dead, or Who's Next, or Sign O' The Times. Odds are, I won't live long enough to see a decade go by where an album is better than any of those (or dozens like them); and I will also not live in a decade in which they aren't reissued in multiple forms, many times over. Anyway...

I think this is pretty complete. I may edit it without notice later as my forgotten stuff returns to mind. I don't often make guarantees, but I can say without much hesitating that any album listed in the top 50 here will only sound no good to you if you completely lack taste of any kind. They ain't all perfect, they ain't all ground-breaking, but none of them are bad (objectively speaking), and I think as decades go, all of them are - at some level, though perhaps to varying degrees - very very good. I hope this list helps you find something to love that you currently don't:

Albums:
1. White Stripes - Elephant:
2. Arcade Fire - Funeral:
3. Elvis Perkins - Ash Wednesday:
4. Ana Da Silva - The Lighthouse:
5. Charles Gayle, William Parker, and Rashied Ali - Touchin' on Trane:
6. Wolf Parade - Apologies To The Queen Mary:
7. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer:
8. Panda Bear - Person Pitch:
9. Various Artists - The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered:
10. Chad VanGaalen - Infiniheart:
11. Sleater-Kinney - All Hands On The Bad One:
12. Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production Of Eggs:
13. The Good The Bad and The Queen - The Good The Bad and The Queen:
14. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible:
15. YACHT - See Mystery Lights:
16. Of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins:
17. Quasi - When The Going Gets Dark:
18. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country:
19. Gorillaz - Demon Days:
20. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium:
21. Peter Bjorn & John - Writer's Block:
22. Petra Hayden - The Who Sell Out:
23. Erase Errata - Nightlife:
24. White Stripes - White Blood Cells:
25. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods:
26. Robyn Hitchcock - Spooked:
27. Silver Jews - Bright Flight:
28. Cat Power - You Are Free:
29. Killing Joke - Killing Joke (orange):
30. Magnetic Fields - Distortion:
31. Beck - Guero:
32. Johnny Cash - American IV: The Man Comes Around:
33. M Ward - Post War:
34. Castanets - City Of Refuge:
35. The National - Alligator:
36. Beck - Sea Change:
37. Konono No. 1 - Congotronics:
38. Karl Blau - Crashing Waves:
39. Deer Tick - War Elephant:
40. Of Montreal - Satanic Panic In The Attic:
41. Yoko Ono - Yes I'm A Witch:
42. Holly Golightly - Truly She Is None Other:
43. El Perro Del Mar - El Perro Del Mar:
44. Beach House - Beach House:
45. Radiohead - In Rainbows:
46. Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News:
47. Wrens - The Meadowlands:
48. Radiohead - Kid A:
49. The Go-Betweens - The Friends Of Rachel Worth:
50. St Vincent - Actor:
51. Handsome Furs - Face Control:
52. Pete & The Pirates - Little Death:
53. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam:
54. The Strokes - Is This It?:
55. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah:
56. Bob Dylan - Together Through Life:
57. Girls - Album:
58. Bishop Allen - Charm School:
59. Jefferey Lewis - 12 Crass Songs:
60. Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica:
61. Various Artists - Sunday Nights - The Songs of Junior Kimbrough:
62. Fall - Real New Fall LP:
63. Wooden Shjips - Dos:
64. Suburban Kids With Biblical Names - #3:
65. June Carter Cash - Wildwood Flower:
66. Phospohorescent - Pride:
67. Fabulous Diamonds - 7 Songs:
68. Sam Amidon - All Is Well:
69. El Perro Del Mar - From The Valley To The Stars:
70. Taken By Trees - Open Field:
71. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend:
72. Sonic Youth - Murray Street:
73. His Name Is Alive - Sweet Earth Flower:
74. Bright Eyes - Four Winds EP:
75. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped:
76. Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers:
77. M Ward - Transistor Radio:
78. Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose:
79. Bob Dylan - Love & Theft:
80. Black Keys - Chulahoma:
81. Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots:
82. Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit:
83. Cardigans - Super Extra Gravity:
84. Chemical Brothers - Come with Us:
85. Portishead - Third:
86. Why? - Alopecia:
87. Band of Horses - Everything All the Time:
88. Au Revoir Simone - The Bird Of Music:
89. Beans - Only:
90. Buzzcocks - Flat Pack Philosophy:
91. Sean Paul - Dutty Rock:
92. Ween – White Pepper:
93. First Aid Kit - Drunken Trees:
94. Curt Kirkwood - Snow:
95. Gorillaz - Space Monkeys vs. Gorillaz:
96. Kate Bush - Ariel:
97. Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation:
98. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular:
99. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House:
100. 180 Gs - 180 D'Gs To The Future:

Honorable Mention:
Le Tigre - Le Tigre: Released 11.30.99 - may have come out in 99, but it was the last of the 20th Century to merit an 'A' in my rating system, something I only picked up in the 21st century, which for all intents, is a meaningless distinction.
Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis: Don't know if this ever came out in the US, but the copy I got says 2001.
Johnny Cash – Unearthed: It is part archive, part re-record, part compilation, part pre-2000 stuff, but it was all pretty much new. If this seems too easy, yr stoopit.
Frank Zappa - Imaginary Diseases: This is a live album and not every note is totally new to the world, but this is actually unheard officially in this form and it is most definitely a unique release and not a compilation. It is also quite excellent.
Times New Viking - Rip It Off: This really might be the most interesting album of the decade. I like it, but I don't actually listen to it very much. I couldn't include it for that reason. I might try harder next decade.
Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Ave. II: Leftovers yes, but released in the Oughts. Not sure how to score that in this
Brian Wilson - Smile: It wasn't really new now was it?