1. Girls Aloud: "Fling" (from Tangled Up, Fascination)
2. Booty Luv: "Boogie 2nite (Seamus Haji Big Love Edit)" (single, Ultra)
3. Róisín Murphy: "Cry Baby" (from Overpowered, EMI)
4. T2 ft. Jodie: "Heartbroken (Radio Edit)" (single, All Around the World)
5. Candie Payne: "By Tomorrow" (single, Deltasonic)
6. Wir Sind Helden: "Die Konkurrenz" (from Soundso, EMI Germany)
7. Yelle: "Dans ta vrai vie" (from Pop Up, EMI France)
8. Chungking: "Slow It Down" (from Stay Up Forever, Institute)
9. Christophe Willem & Valérie Lemercier: "Pourquoi tu t'en vas?" (from Inventiare, Vogue)
10. Bertrand Burgalat & Robert Wyatt: "This Summer Night" (from Chéri B.B., Tricatel)
11. Escort: "All Through the Night (Original Mix)" (single, Escort)
12. Shweta Pandit: "Dhun Teri Hai Saanson Mein" (from High School Musical 2 (Hindi Version), Times Music)
13. Circle: "Saturnus Reality" (from Katapult, No Quarter)
14. Akala: "Love in My Eyes" (from Freedom Lasso, Illa Slate)
15. Clockcleaner: "Vomiting Mirrors" (from Babylon Rules, Load)
16. Acid Eater: "LSD" (from Virulent Fuzz Punk A.C.I.D., Time Bomb, Japan)
17. Anaal Nathrakh: "Virus Bomb" (from Hell Is Empty and All the Devils Are Here, FETO)
18. Nightwish: "Bye Bye Beautiful" (from Dark Passion Play, Roadrunner)
19. Nôze: "Remember Love" (single, My Best Friend)

Jeez, you've all been listening to Amy Winehouse, LCD Soundsystem, Kanye West, Justice, and Arcade Fire, and you want more? Sorry, no can do. I'm not being a snob: I do love big names and big pop—I just don't respond as much to what's popular in the U.S. There are some very mainstream songs on my compilation, except they're not mainstream in America.

My three favorite albums of the year all come from the U.K. and all represent commercial pop at its finest. (Also, not a guy in sight, but that really wasn't on purpose.) Girls Aloud, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and Róisín Murphy each collaborate with songwriters and producers to achieve their goals. It's no wonder Girls Aloud's "Fling" is at the top of my list: Xenomania's songwriting and production chops on it make my head spin. How, for instance, could they come up with a bass line that's both pounding and melodic? (I left out Sophie from this comp because I couldn't pick one song from her album, and because I decided that more people needed to hear the super-cheesy, super-cheap, super-satisfying disco-house of Booty Luv—also my fave band name of the year.)

More Brit charm for my shot of '60s flair, except I opted for Candie Payne's retro-futurism instead of Amy Winehouse's neo-soul stylings. Payne's album, made with Noonday Underground's Simon Dine, is a marvel of Swinging Liverpool charm, and Dine's production is, as usual with him, a textbook example of crackly density.

Non-English songs fared well, too. I didn't include tracks from High School Musical 2 because I couldn't pick one that I loved more than the others, so I went for "Dhun Teri Hai Saanson Mein," a Hindi cover of Sharpay's version of "You Are the Music in Me." We also have Yelle's hilarious "Dans ta Vrai Vie," and jack of all trades Bertrand Burgalat shows up twice: he wrote and produced a duet for comedian-actress Valérie Lemercier and Christophe Willem (winner of Nouvelle Star, an Idol-like French TV show) and he got Robert Wyatt to sing "This Summer Night" on his own Chéri B.B. album. German pop? Check as well.

Think local, buy local? Not so much for me then. The only New York band on the comp is Escort. I saw the sprawling Brooklyn combo twice in 2007 and was ecstatic both times. These guys play classic disco, and with 15 of them on stage, they do it the way it should be done. We're not talking Kid Creole caliber but it's getting close at times.

The rock front is represented by two distinct styles: total aggro and total bombast. On the aggro side, Philadelphia's Clockcleaner, Birmingham's Anaal Nathrakh, and Acid Eater, the garage project of Japanese noisenik Masonna. Two of my fave tracks of the year embody bombast, except that each appropriately clocks in at around 15 minutes and including them both would have eaten up a third of my alloted time for this comp. So I traded Nightwish's "The Poet and the Pendulum" for the band's shorter "Bye Bye Beautiful" and left out Litmus' space-rock epic "Under the Sign" altogether.

Nôze's "Remember Love": What a weird track, wistful and awkward at the same time. But old-school house is the best way to say goodbye.

Elisabeth Vincentelli is the arts editor of Time Out New York. Her essay on the Eurovision Song Contest is included in Best Music Writing 2007 (Da Capo).