1. Osvaldo Golijov, "Call" (from Golijov: Oceana, Tenebrae, 3 Songs, Deutsche Grammophon)
2. Rufus Wainwright, "Going to a Town" (from Release the Stars, Geffen)
3. St. Vincent, "Paris Is Burning" (from Marry Me, Beggars Banquet)
4. BARR, "The Song Is the Single" (from Summary, 5 Rue Christine)
5. Pylon, "Feast on My Heart" (from Gyrate Plus, DFA)
6. Noisettes, "Scratch Your Name" (from What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?, UMVD)
7. Of Montreal, "Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider" (from Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Merge)
8. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, "Nobody's Baby" (from 100 Days, 100 Nights, Daptone)
9. M.I.A., "Boyz" (from Kala, Interscope)
10. Farah, "Law of Life" (from After Dark, Italians Do It Better)
11. Gui Boratto, "Chromophobia" (from Chromophobia, Kompakt)
12. Telepathe, "Sinister Militia" (from Sinister Militia EP, the Social Registry)
13. Nine Inch Nails, "Me, I'm Not" (from Year Zero, Interscope)
14. Liars, "Houseclouds" (from Liars, Mute)
15. Health, "Triceratops" (from Health, Lovepump United)
16. No Age, "My Life's Alright Without You," (from Weirdo Rippers, Fat Cat)
17. A Place to Bury Strangers, "Don't Think Lover" (from A Place to Bury Strangers, Killer Pimp)
18. Jesu, "Old Year" (from Conqueror, Hydra Head)
19. Magik Markers, "Empty Bottles," (from Boss, Ecstatic Peace)

One significant change in pop lyrics over time has been the movement from songs about fate to songs about choice. No longer did a lady have to pine under the moon—she could speak up. Momentary pleasure didn't mean a lifetime promise so much as a heavy date. Pop lyrics can provide a gauge of where we are at any given moment. So this mix is a partly macro, partly personal comp of songs about choice as suggested and reflected in song. For me this year this meant three kinds of choices: romantic, professional, and life-cycle.

Hip-hop has a graceful term for the change in life-cycle needs: "grown and sexy." I like this idea: it allows a mature form of popular music room to expand beyond youth culture to lifelong fans no longer interested the early-20s thrills of binge drinking, casual sex, and late nights in large public places. So . . . long terms, good friends, responsibilities, kids, aging parents, bills? All these things creep in slowly until a "good night out" is some variation on a 2 a.m. semi-drunk reluctant goodbye from a great dinner party.

Indie rock doesn't have a similar term for an adult POV with residual punk rock attitude, but with all nods to Weird Al, let's imagine it as "grown and nerdy." If Jay-Z is the grown and sexy CEO, perhaps BARR's Brendan Fowler or Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes are indie's clown princes of the grown-and-nerdy aesthetic. There are two types of geeks in operation here. Barnes's decade-long evolution from Elephant 6 indie popper to nervous white funk showman has been accompanied by fishnet go-go gear and tense flicks of the hip in live shows that have girls and guys alike swooning. On "Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider," Barnes croons, "You must be aware I'm not alone/I've got a tigress back at home/And besides, you wouldn't know what to do with me," without a shred of irony. It's one of many recent Of Montreal songs where sex is addressed unsentimentally while holding onto the awkward adorablism so part of the indie male ethos—almost as if Barnes were responding to Betty Davis's unapologetic '70s sex funk.

Brendan Fowler is more punk than funk: his rhythms rushed, his voice cracking, his presence all white Ts, tattoo sleeves, and jeans, arms flailing and mike cables snaking the stage. "The Song Is the Single" details an Armageddon break-up, Fowler confessing, "I just want to hold someone"—very emo. He channels reluctant grown-up Stephen Malkmus, but without the slacker put-on, mixing confession with chat about his band less as boho romance than as a viable alternative career.

That was part of my grown and nerdy problem in 2007 for sure—how to make a fulfilling job life that still sticks to indie values. Perhaps that's how the Noisettes "Scratch Your Name" fits, as an optimistic anthem motivating listeners in a wider way than Art Brut's suggestion that one form a band. "Petrified to dance/You wait in the wings for your curtain call/On your marks, come on, get set, go," Shingai Shoniwa sings over terse, non-stop riffs; her message feels less like that of James Murphy and more like that of Dr. Abraham Maslow, who writes of folks who move beyond necessity to the full realization of potential. (I didn't pick LCD's "All My Friends," another dance floor ambition metaphor, because it was too midstream, too self-actualized for me.)

Unlike rock life, a writer's life only seems to kick into maturity in one's late 20s. It's hard—especially as a woman—to look to pop music for insight about the 30-something creative self, since so many popsters spend their 30s pretending to be a decade younger. That's why the Laurie Anderson reissues hit me so hard this year. Jody Rosen asked in his Slate year-end how Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" didn't place in the Pazz & Jop in 1981 while "one hit wonder" "O Superman" tied for number one. The answer is simple: Anderson was a visionary and critics champion the avant-garde to encourage the future to move in directions they'd like. One listen to either another avant-pop mid-career artist like Trent Reznor, the still upswinging Liars, or a newcomer like Farah shows conceptual permutations of that song still working themselves out in the sound world. Sadly for it, "O Superman" is hard to karaoke and lives as sonic document, not a blueprint.

Most of this mix asks a question closer to the heart: what one does after the Armageddon break-up, an experience BARR and I had in common this year. On good days I felt the na-na-na-na boo-boo of No Age's "My Life's Alright Without You," or the sisters over misters vibe of Sharon Jones on "Nobody's Baby," but mostly the breakup torrent of Bob Dylan's "Idiot Wind" repeated in my stereo, the key stanza beginning, "It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart."

So goes the struggle to accept responsibility for failure. After doing so, my miserable situation was broken up by that most pop-song of sentiments: a miracle. I moved back to NYC after nine months of L.A. (thus BARR, Health, and No Age) and sat in bar with an old friend discussing my sudden stroke of luck to be in love once again. "Will you get married," she asked; a shock passed through me. St. Vincent asks John to vow to her on her stellar Marry Me, but my sentiments run more closely to those of Rufus Wainright's "Going to a Town" (which follows Golijov as a nod to this year's most celebrated music writer, Alex Ross). If this song isn't a moral argument for the right for same sex marriage, I don't know what is. In the first verse, Wainright paints a devastating landscape of his utopia: a place where humiliated, betrayed, propaganda-tired folks can know each other truthfully: "I'm going to a place that has already been disgraced." In the second verse he demands more—that everyone imagine his position both as a gay man and as U.S. citizen who should not have to move to achieve his right to love, in one of the most beautiful stanzas of my lifetime: "Tell me do you think you really go to hell for having love?/And laugh at thinking everything that you've done is good? /I really need to know/After soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood/I'm so tired of America." What would it mean to be among the married in Rufus Wainright's America? To me it seems to be reveling in a choice not extended to everyone who wants it, a flaunting of the privilege heterosexuality gives people in this country.

I never wanted to be married anyway, but it wasn't until I heard "Going to a Town" that I fully understood what was so wrong with the whole institution. Likewise, I was headed toward grown thoughts about my job, but hearing BARR mix talk of love, politics, and personal career choices helped me stay aground, and hearing Kevin Barnes and Betty Davis demand a lover with soul power were only two more imperatives telling me to work towards bodily pleasure without an ounce of guilt. My 2007 mix tape was all about getting grown for sure, but as for getting sexy? Well, gee, wait . . . first let me take off my glasses . . . .

Daphne Carr is the series editor of the Best Music Writing series for Da Capo Press.