ALBUMS (10 each)
1. Robert Wyatt - Comicopera
2. Miranda Lambert - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
3. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
4. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
5. Jay-Z - American Gangster
6. M.I.A. - Kala
7. Lil Wayne - Da Drought 3
8. Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare
9. Roisin Murphy - Overpowered
10. Amerie - Because I Love It

TRACKS
1. M.I.A. - Paper Planes
2. Ne-Yo - Because of You
3. Kanye West - Stronger
4. Maroon 5 - Makes Me Wonder
5. LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
6. Ciara - Like A Boy
7. CRS - Us Placers
8. Prince - Chelsea Rodgers
9. Paul McCartney - Ever Present Past
10. Justin Timberlake - LoveStoned/I Think That She Knows

ARTISTS
1. Lil Wayne
2. M.I.A.
3. LCD Soundsystem
4. Miranda Lambert
5. Kanye West

COMMENTS
Although I past the thirty-year mark three years ago, 2007 marked the time when I first noticed how aging had affected my listening. The imaginative leaps necessary for great criticism got longer, even as my sympathy expanded. Dubstep and The Field remain out of reach, but Beanie Siegel and Lil Wayne seemed funnier, their pleasures more lasting.

My favorite records mapped worlds beyond themselves, results notwithstanding. I almost left off Kala from my list even though I put more effort into it than any other record; indeed, I still think the middle stretch is a wheeze, especially the number that sounds like Musical Youth's 1983 Donna Summer collaboration. But the strength of those volcanic beats said more about the vertiginous cosmopolitanism of M.I.A.'s ambitions than her lyrics, which still read like "1999" fuck-during-the-apocalypse. The exception: "Paper Planes" — rueful and heavy in equal measure, a beguiling mix of tones and tints.

But my favorite album was created by a sensibility whose old enough to recognize that chaos and love need not exist as a binarity. Like a thistle growing out of a pile of shit, Robert Wyatt's Comicopera imagined a world in which intentions have consequences, whether it's a man and woman figuring out what to do next after realizing their compatibility or a terrorist about to blow up a crowded building. Wyatt's never-more-ethereal falsetto extends compassion. For all her shrewdness, M.I.A. have only pointed in this direction. At my age suggestiveness isn't good enough. Neither is overstatement like Arcade Fire's. Watch Miranda Lambert, though: this sharpie may know a lot about careening towards love and doom, but getting your two Gretchen Wilson-esque barnburners out of the way at the beginning of the album suggests she knows how music works too.