1. Kylie Minogue, "2 Hearts (Studio Remix)" (from 12-inch, EMI)
2. Steadycam, "In the Moog for Love" (from 12-inch, K2)
3. M.I.A., "Boyz" (from Kala, Interscope)
4. Tough Alliance, "Silly Crimes" (from New Waves EP, Summer Lovers Unlimited)
5. Cassie, "Is It You" (from Step Up 2 the Streets OST, Nextselection Lifestyle Group)
6. Fantasia, "When I See You (Remix)" (single, 19)
7. Kathy Diamond, "I Need You" (from Miss Diamond to You, Permanent Vacation
8. Farah, "Law of Life" (from After Dark, Italians Do It Better)
9. Invisible Conga People, "Weird Pains" (MP3)
10. Tinchy Strider, "Wonder" (from Star in the Hood, Phantom Sound & Vision)
11. Dizzee Rascal, "Flex (DJ Q Remix)" (single, XL)
12. T2 ft. Jodie, "Heartbroken" (single, All Around the World)
13. Dude 'n Nem, "Watch My Feet" (single, TVT)
14. Panda Bear, "I'm Not" (from Person Pitch, Warp)
15. Mari Boine vs. Mungolian Jet Set, "It Ain't Necessarily Evil (A Mung's Portrayal Of The Traditional Norwegian Suoivean Idjagie Dance)" (MP3, myspace.com/mungolianjsetset)

When I look back over the songs I squeezed onto an 80 minute disc, it strikes me that 2007 felt voluptuously, decadently overcooked, although maybe every year does after a fashion.

Many of my favorite sounds this year were so languorously beautiful that I simply dubbed them "Balearic" whether the tag fit or not—in yet another sign of aging, my natural inclination towards music with a steady rhythmic pulse and sense of purpose warred with a sudden desire to lie down somewhere sunny. The perfect pseudo-hippie soundtrack to this quarter-life crisis was mostly music whose love of prettiness was unabashed and obscene: Studio draping ringing layers of Spanish guitar and clouds of dub echo over Kylie's gasps of desire; Farah hallucinating a new new testament over ominous Italodisco; Invisible Conga People muttering incantations into their tribal drums; Steadycam sending call and response hooks careening over layers of fudge-bass; Tough Alliance's vapor-trail pop explosions; Panda Bear whispering secrets from behind a veil of choral feedback; Mungolian Jet Set's bloated prog-dance remixes paying homage to the first Orb album; Kathy Diamond greeting the dawn with sighing percussion work-outs. (Robert Wyatt might also fit in here somewhere.)

Whenever I rose from this self-imposed lassitude and looked around, it was easy to find enough roughness and readiness to keep things unpredictable, from the hyperactive bass sculptures of bassline-house producers T2 and DJ Q to Tinchy Strider's perfect grime-pop to M.I.A.'s surprising headbanger flourishes to Dude 'N Nem's brilliantly single-minded juke-house classic "Watch My Feet."

Somewhere in between was R&B, which was at its emotionally manipulative best this year: no song embraced camp excess as proudly as "When I See You," while no song made my heart swell so much as Cassie's simple, gorgeous "Is It You"—unless it was Rihanna's "Umbrella." Likewise left off the disc due to space considerations are all those heady dance floor epics that found new ways to split the difference between driving and dreamlike (Matt John's "Soulkaramba," Henrik Schwharz remixing Mari Boine, anything Dennis Ferrer touched), or the year's great hip hop (Freeway, UGK) whose winning qualities resisted easy reduction to critical clichés (though I certainly tried).

Not a year for futurist revelations, but nonetheless I feel perversely proud of this music, and pleased by what it says about its makers and listeners. In 2007 it seemed like everyone—or, at least, everyone I cared about—wanted to throw off the shackles of sensibility, to ignore the endless "back to basics" appeals to simple instrumentation and letter-to-the-editor lyric-writing. From Balearic to bassline to ballsy R&B, largese was the order of the day sonically and emotionally, and though some chose a strategy of supine drift and others, wired bounciness, the endpoint was oddly similar: sound for sound's sake, and a willingness to cut through cheese in order to hit just the right vein of affective intensity. It's a sham, of course: a disc I made any other year would probably share these qualities, while the world outside turns on in sublime ignorance.

Tim Finney is a freelance music writer in Melbourne, Australia.