Of course I knew which album was going to win the 2007 Idolator Pop Critics Poll. Well, not quite. Let me explain. I've been privately handicapping year-end polls for a while now, and my track record is good. The only poll in recent memory that I guessed completely wrong was, um, the one I ran last year—the inaugural Idolator poll, then known as Jackin' Pop—which TV on the Radio nabbed with ease, leaving my guess, Bob Dylan, down in sixth place. But that isn't the reason that, before the first ballot came in for this year's poll, I came up with, in order, Radiohead, M.I.A., Kanye West, Arcade Fire, and LCD Soundsystem, with the caveat that any of them could win.

I swear I wasn't hedging. Consensus was heavy in the rockcrit air this year, as anyone (like me) who's grumbled about nearly every other magazine/newspaper/website/blog survey has noticed. Still, I wondered if our poll might not shake out a little differently, not least because the editors of many publications shape their year-end lists to fit their message, whatever that happens to be. By definition this poll can't be shaped by editorial bias when using a raw vote-count. And frankly, the way each of my projected five winners were showing up on every other list made me figure a dogfight was brewing. I was looking forward to it, too; I started tabulating the results every few days, figuring I'd get to watch In Rainbows and Kala and Graduation and Neon Bible all leapfrog over one another to a photo finish. Not fucking hardly: Sound of Silver had the lead by the start of the week two and won the race by a proverbial mile. Well, by 326 points, which is close enough.

Anyway, LCD wasn't even my biggest (sort of) miscall this year. That goes to my prediction that "Rehab" was going to take the top spot for Tracks, despite every single person to whom I mentioned this pausing and then, kindly as they could, saying, "Um, what about 'Umbrella'?" (Oddly, no one wagered it would be "All My Friends," which was winning for a minute there.) Two or three encounters like this should have been enough to convince me I would be proven wrong, but I come from stubborn stock. Rihanna, of course, won big and clean; "Rehab" did fine, finishing a strong fourth with some help from the ten votes it received last year. (Peter Bjorn & John got even more help thanks to our carryover rule—with records receiving half the votes they got the year before—putting "Young Folks" in our Top 10 for the second year in a row.) I picked the Artist winner (shocking, that), didn't bother guessing Reissues (and wouldn't have been right if I'd tried), and will now go back to Albums, because it's time for some wonky stats analysis that, for serious, I think means something.

In brute numbers, this year's Top 3 albums each received more votes than TV on the Radio did last year. That's simply individual mentions, not points awarded per ballot, of which In Rainbows received only 11 fewer than Cookie Mountain's total—this despite a dip in voter turnout. Equally significant is that Radiohead came so close to last year's winner with by far the softest support of any of this year's Top 10, finishing 44th (out of 51) on our Enthusiasm chart, which ranks average points voted per ballot—and which just bolsters my hunch that for all the "their best since wherever they lost you" reviews In Rainbows has gotten, the album simply rode the coattails of the year's funniest music-biz stunt, even if only one person actually phrased an artist vote "the Radiohead Effect." And look closely at the Enthusiasm 40, which, like last year's, actually features over 50 titles. Last year, only one Top 10 album also featured in the Enthusiasm Top 10. This year the number is six, with Spoon's sixth-place Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga leading the way and including both LCD and M.I.A.

Forgive my Pollyanna streak here, but this indicates that Pop 2007 trashes Pop 2006. It did for me, anyway. I've seen lots of caviling that it was a terrible year for music. Maybe it was, but to my ears it was a great year for records. Sure, I have issues with the poll's results. I wish the Miles Davis box weren't so expensive, so more writers would have bought or traded for it instead of being just fine with the Young Marble Giants set they got in the mail. I need never read another word about how ungodly daring Betty Davis was. I figure a handful of albums—Of Montreal, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, the White Stripes—made Top 40 thanks to better older work, and I consider Wilco the dullest set-aside artist of the decade. I ran out of patience with Animal Collective pretty much the minute I heard them, and will count my surprise enjoyment of Panda Bear's "Bros" as a nice little fluke. I'd happily trade Burial's Untrue and the National's Boxer for actual, physical wallpaper, which at least sticks. And I plan to nod and smile at anyone who tells me I have to see the Arcade Fire to "get" them, because I did, and they're right: the band is even more sincerely tedious in person.

But largely I'm right there with this year's consensus. LCD and M.I.A. and Spoon made my Top 3 albums, though my favorite wasn't Sound of Silver (seventh on my list) but LCD main man James Murphy and drummer Pat Mahoney's instant-classic DJ set FabricLive 36. (Hand to heart, it's every bit as playable as Silver; even a disco lifer who's memorized all 10 minutes of Larry Levan's Instant Funk remix hasn't heard these songs this way.) And I like-to-adore nearly all the Top 40 Tracks, with a special shout to Gui Boratto's "Beautiful Life," a loved-up rave/New Order flashback, not as explicit as "All My Friends" but far lovelier, tied for 24th place.

I'm cool with the Artists list, too, insofar as it clears up hunches while opening up other questions. As mentioned, Radiohead was more rooted-for than beloved this year. (That's not a criticism—there's room for both—but it's a distinction worth making.) Lil Wayne's sixth-place finish this year is even less surprising than his eighth-place finish last year, as are his bumps in Tracks (13 have his name somewhere, as opposed to 11 last year) and Albums (Da Drought 3 at No. 26, up from Dedication 2 at No. 40). I enjoy the 12th-place tie between T-Pain and Justice (Vocoders unite), not to mention Daft Punk tied for 14th. They were second on my ballot after LCD, as much for their viral presence—fuck "blog house," I'm going to start calling this stuff 'botsploitation—as for the nonstop glee of their live show. I find it appropriate that Artist Bruce is tied for 9th while Album Bruce hovers at 25. (Ditto similar balances for Justice and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and, hey, Britney Spears, who finished a stunning fourth in the Enthusiasm vote.) I wonder how many voters Jay Reatard has on his promo list. And I keep coming back to LCD's amazingly strong finish.

A lot has been written about James Murphy's equally canny command of groove, studio-craft, and words, so let me add simply that one reason I was surprised by Sound of Silver's landslide was how dance-specific I took its biggest hit to be. Obviously, any album with a "Homosapien" homage as bald as "North American Scum" is clearly indebted to post-punk even without Murphy's track record as a dance-rock kingpin. But I swear that the first few times I listened to "All My Friends," the lyrics seemed so specifically about dance culture that I thought they couldn't possibly carry across widely. The further twist is that "All My Friends" wound up topping my Tracks list as well, and as with my albums, it wasn't the main event that took the prize. Much as I admire the Steve Reich-like piano and kraut-ish groove of the original, it took Franz Ferdinand arranging it a la New Order in rock mode and letting 'er rip to sell me completely. So much for my original conclusion that only ex-ravers would care about the song; obviously I'm the guy who should be running a critics' poll.

Then again, Murphy's a total critics' darling. So's Kanye, so much so that when Graduation's first-week numbers came in I got an email from a reporter asking if I thought he'd win the poll. I declined to forecast—why jinx it?—but it did make me wonder, not least because 2007 was such a lousy year for hip-hop that I thought Kanye might get more fallback/add-on/genre-token votes than his healthy point average indicates he did. It isn't just that only four rap albums finished Top 40, or that 69th-place Ghostface Killah and Wu-Tang at 73rd came out too late to make it six. It's that even if we'd gotten more rap specialists' ballots there weren't really any albums that had gathered enough consensus to push up the ranks.

That seemed true across the board. If any other genre triumphed in the lists, it was dance music: whatever his use of "real instruments," James Murphy can still knock off first-rate house remixes in his spare time—see the DFA remix of Diddy and Christina Aguilera's "Tell Me," a letter-perfect mid-'90s Masters at Work homage—and more specialists would likely have just bolstered the positions of Burial, the Field, and Justice, not to mention LCD and M.I.A. Ditto world music writers; maybe Youssou N'Dour would have joined Tinariwen and Gogol Bordello in the Top 40, probably not. More metal respondents might have nudged Jesu's Conqueror up from 68th, though I'd wager the reason it didn't do as well as last year's headbangers' consensus, Mastodon's Blood Mountain—24th overall, second to Burial on the Enthusiasm list—isn't because our ranks aren't especially metal, though they aren't. It's because even though indie rock always does well in these things—for better or worse, indie rock's fans are what the big polls, and a lot of the smaller ones, attract—this year it had a stranglehold like no other genre on (here's that word again) consensus.

In pop terms, what that often boils down to is a sense of event, and one reason 2007 felt so friggin' indie is that even before Jonny Greenwood hit "publish" on September 30, a lot of indie records were sparking debate and making headlines. Granted, a lot of those headlines were strictly trade-press, but still, you didn't have to like Modest Mouse or the Arcade Fire or the Shins (I sure don't) in order to rubberneck for their high chart debuts. The last time this sort of thing happened on a regular basis was the early-'90s alternative boom, but this cycle doesn't have much in common with that one. The 2007 albums aren't blockbusters but steady-stream large-cult items, a rare reliable thing in a diminishing marketplace. No wonder Kanye West spent nearly as much energy this year aligning himself with indie's young folks as he did pummeling Curtis: he'll do anything for a blonde dyke, but what he really craves is some of that long tail. If he goes for woollier arrangements next album, maybe he'll set aside Jon Brion and give Jens Lekman a call.

So that's the voters. I conceived 2007 slightly differently, as my lists below reflect. Reissues and Artists didn't require expansion; the two big categories did. I've limited myself to 30 albums I'm absolutely certain about, leaving off a couple dozen I know I like and a couple dozen more I'm certain I will with more exposure. (Titles I came to late in the year, such as the double-handful I checked out from Decibel's year-end metal list, get short shrift here, unfortunately.) It says a lot about how much I enjoyed the year's music that I could have happily voted for nearly any of them.

Tracks I handled differently. Instead of a preferentially ordered list, I put together a mega-sized version of Idolator Pop's other component, the 2007 in the Mix CDs we commissioned from three-dozen of our favorite critics. For that package, I contributed an all-reissues set; here, I concentrate on the year itself for (appropriately) seven CDs. These follow a very rough narrative arc: discs one through four were made quarterly over the course of the year; discs five and six largely skim the cream of the leftovers; and disc seven is mostly devoted to stuff I was introduced to via this and other year-end polls. The ten songs I voted for in the poll are in boldface. As with the albums list, I could have included a lot more, and at some point I will probably add to them. But for now they're immensely satisfying. Enjoy, and have a wonderful 2008.

ALBUMS
1. James Murphy & Pat Mahoney, FabricLive 36 (Fabric) 15
2. M.I.A., Kala (Interscope) 14
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge) 13
4. Nev Wright, August 2007 (mixtape) 12
5. Pantha Du Prince, This Bliss (Dial) 11
6. Jens Lekman, Night Falls Over Kortedala (Secretly Canadian) 9
7. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver (Capitol) 8
8. John Prine & Mac Wiseman, Standard Songs For Average People (Oh Boy) 7
9. The Field, From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt) 6
10. v/a, Motel Lovers: Southern Soul from the Chitlin' Circuit (Trikont) 5
11. Lil Wayne, Da Drought 3 (mixtape)
12. The Pierces, Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge (Lizard King)
13. Les Savy Fav, Let's Be Friends (Frenchkiss)
14. Danuel Tate, Pushcard EP (Wagon Repair)
15. Brad Paisley, 5th Gear (Arista Nashville)
16. Kenge Kenge, Introducing Kenge Kenge (World Music Network)
17. Gogol Bordello, Super Taranta! (Side One Dummy)
18. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black (Republic)
19. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Raising Sand (Rounder)
20. DJ Q, Dirty Dubz Vol. 1 (More 2 Da Floor, UK)
21. Kanye West, Graduation (Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam)
22. Nick Lowe, At My Age (Yep Roc)
23. v/a, Bassline Flava Vol. 6 (mixtape)
24. v/a, Hyphy Hitz (TVT)
25. Blonde Redhead, 23 (4AD)
26. Distance, My Demons (Planet Mu)
27. Caribou, Andorra (Domino)
28. v/a, Fierce Disco (Fierce Angel)
29. Madlib, Beat Konducta Vol. 3 & 4: In India (Stones Throw)
30. Justice, Cross (Ed Banger/Vice)

REISSUES
1. Miles Davis, The Complete On the Corner Sessions (Columbia/Legacy)
2. Tabu Ley Rochereau, The Voice of Lightness: Congo Classics 1961-1977 (Sterns)
3. v/a, Ultimate Breaks & Beats: The Complete Collection (Street Beat)
4. v/a, Griddle Greasin' Daddies and Dirty Cowboys (Jasmine)
5. The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet, Rock My Soul (Living Era)

ARTISTS
1. LCD Soundsystem
2. Daft Punk
3. M.I.A.
4. Brad Paisley
5. Amy Winehouse

07 AND '07 IS: 2007 IN THE MEGAMIX
Disc one
1. Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra, "Song For David" (Ubiquity)
2. The Pierces, "Boring" (Lizard King)
3. Kalabrese ft. Guillermo Sohrya, "I Can Not Hide Anymore" (Stattmusik)
4. Pantha Du Prince, "Steiner Im Flug" (Dial)
5. The Field, "Everyday" (Kompakt)
6. Gui Boratto, "Beautiful Life" (Kompakt)
7. Justus Koehncke, "Elan (Prins Thomas Diskomiks ft. the Full Pupp Strings)" (Kompakt)
8. LCD Soundsystem, "Us V. Them" (Capitol)
9. Basement Jaxx, "Make Me Sweat" (Atlantic Jaxx)
10. Antibalas, "Beaten Metal" (Anti-)
11. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, "The Unwanted Things" (Touch and Go)
12. Mims, "This Is Why I'm Hot" (Capitol)
13. John Prine & Mac Wiseman, "Old Cape Cod" (Oh Boy)

Disc two
1. Blonde Redhead, "23" (4AD)
2. Keren Ann, "Lay Your Head Down" (Metro Blue)
3. The Clientele, "Bookshop Casanova" (Merge)
4. Pumice, "Northland" (Soft Abuse)
5. M.I.A., "Bird Flu" (MP3)
6. A-Trak, "Wampercycle" (Obey)
7. Dizzee Rascal, "Sirens" (XL)
8. Rihanna ft. Jay-Z, "Umbrella" (Def Jam)
9. Prodigy (Mobb Deep), "Bang on 'Em" (Koch)
10. Devin the Dude ft. Snoop Dogg & Andre 3000, "What a Job" (Rap-a-Lot)
11. Ne-Yo, "Because of You" (Def Jam)
12. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, "I'm Not Gonna Cry" (Daptone)
13. Mark Ronson ft. Amy Winehouse, "Valerie" (Capitol)
14. Distance, "My Demons" (Planet Mu)
15. Sileni, "Twitchy Droid Leg VIP" (Offshore)
16. Hot Chip, "My Piano (DJ-Kicks)" (K7)
17. Escort, "All Through the Night (Original Mix)" (Escort)
18. Audion, "Fred's Bells" (Ghostly International)

Disc three
1. Thomas-Mayer, "Ueber Wiesen" (Kompakt)
2. Fleetwood Mac, "You Make Lovin' Fun (Trailmix)" (Synergize)
3. Jamie Lloyd, "What We Have ( . . . Is a Zwicker Remix)" (Future Classic)
4. Danuel Tate, "Bloss" (Wagon Repair)
5. Black Moth Super Rainbow, "Rollerdisco" (Graveface)
6. Caribou, "Melody Day" (Domino)
7. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (XL)
8. Madlib, "Indian Deli" (Stones Throw)
9. Lil' Wayne, "Upgrade" (mixtape)
10. Sean Kingston, "Beautiful Girls" (Beluga Heights)
11. Rihanna, "Don't Stop the Music" (Def Jam)
12. Spoon, "Don't Make Me a Target" (Merge)
13. Rosemary, "40-40" (April Split)
14. Bruce Springsteen, "Radio Nowhere" (Columbia)
15. Les Savy Fav, "Patty Lee" (Frenchkiss)
16. Franz Ferdinand, "All My Friends" (EMI)
17. Tracy Lawrence, "Find Out Who Your Friends Are" (Rocky Comfort)
18. Brad Paisley, "Ticks" (Arista Nashville)

Disc four
1. Hercules and Love Affair, "Hercules Theme" (DFA)
2. Justin Timberlake, "LoveStoned/I Think She Knows (Justice Remix)" (Jive)
3. Laura Kidd, "Automatic (12" Mix)" (541)
4. Dude 'N Nem, "Watch My Feet" (TVT)
5. UGK ft. OutKast, "Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)" (Interscope)
6. Kanye West, "Champion" (Def Jam)
7. Jay-Z, "Roc Boys (And the Winner Is . . .)" (Def Jam)
8. Prince, "PFUnk" (PrinceFamsUnited.com)
9. Radiohead, "Reckoner" (InRainbows.com)
10. Robert Wyatt, "Anachronist" (Domino)
11. Jens Lenkman, "A Postcard to Nina" (Secretly Canadian)
12. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, "Your Long Journey" (Rounder)
13. Miranda Lambert, "Famous in a Small Town" (Sony)
14. Fucked Up, "Year of the Pig" (What's Your Rupture)

Disc five
1. Amy Winehouse ft. Ghostface Killah, "You Know I'm No Good (Remix)" (Republic)
2. Brother Ali, "Listen Up" (Rhymesayers)
3. Buck 65, "Lipstick" (Strange Famous)
4. Big Quarters, "Everyday" (Big Quarters)
5. Justice, "New Jack" (Vice)
6. Of Montreal, "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger" (Polyvinyl)
7. Jens Lenkman, "Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig" (Secretly Canadian)
8. LCD Soundsystem, "Someone Great" (Capitol)
9. Daniel Wang, "All Flowers Must Fade" (Lo)
10. Cortney Tidwell, "Don't Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan's Objects in Space Remix)" (Ever/!K7)
11. Bob Sinclar, "Champ Elysées Theme (Jamie Lewis Steppin' Out at the Disco Inferno Mix)" (Purple Tracks)
12. DJ Q, "Girl VIP" (More 2 Da Floor)
13. Zibba, "Be Your Girl" (Krush)
14. Glass Candy, "Rolling Down the Hills (Spring Demo)" (Italians Do It Better)
15. Thomas Fehlmann, "Camilla" (Kompakt)

Disc six
1. The Cribs, "Men's Needs" (Wichita)
2. The Go, "Help You Out" (Cass)
3. White Rabbits, "The Plot" (Say Hey)
4. Grinderman, "No Pussy Blues" (Anti-)
5. Gogol Bordello, "Your Country" (Side One Dummy)
6. T2 ft. Jodie Aysha, "Heartbroken (Original Extended Mix)" (All Around the World)
7. Dizzee Rascal, "Flex (DJ Q Remix)" (XL)
8. G Beatz, "Ice Cream" (unsure of label; from Bassline Flava Vol. 5)
9. Ill Mana, "Slugz without Shellz" (Bad Mannerz!)
10. Virgo, "More 2 Da Floor" (Mr. V)
11. J. Holiday, "Bed" (Music Line)
12. R. Kelly ft. Usher, "Same Girl" (Jive)
13. Riskay ft. Aviance & Real, "Smell Yo Dick" (MySpace.com/riskaydramaqueen)
14. Still Going, "Still Going Theme" (DFA)
15. Ame, "Balandine" (Innervisions)
16. Kenge Kenge, "Obare Yinda" (World Music Network)

Disc seven
1. Jonathan Coulton and Ellen McLain, "Still Alive" (MP3)
2. Britt Daniel, "Bring It on Home to Me" (Arena Rock)
3. Air, "Napalm Love" (Astralwerks)
4. The Bug ft. Killa P & Flow Dan, "Skeng" (Hyperdub)
5. CRS, "Us Placers" (mixtape)
6. Oh No, "Banger" (Stones Throw)
7. Pitbull ft. Trina & Young Boss, "Go Girl" (TVT)
8. Duke Dumont, "Lean & Bounce" (Turbo)
9. Durrty Goodz, "Switching Songs Pt. 2 (The Good O'l Days)" (Awkward)
10. Sinden and Count of Monte Cristal, "Beeper" (Counterfeet)
11. Roland Appel, "Dark Soldier" (Sonar Kollektiv)
12. Eddie Zarook & Casio Casino, "011RNS" (Lo-Fi Stereo)
13. Kleerup ft. Robyn, "With Every Heartbeat" (Konichiwa)
14. Rufus Wainwright, "Tiergarten (Supermayer Remix)" (Geffen)
15. Brad Paisley, "Online" (Arista Nashville)

Michaelangelo Matos is the editor of the Idolator Pop Critics Poll. He lives in Seattle.