My 2010 top ten albums list is a good example of how such things are forever in flux. Only Laura Marling (then #4) made my 100 Albums project. I still love the top three although there are other Tracey Thorn and Charlotte Gainsbourg albums I gravitate towards. A revised list would likely include Fitz and The Tantrum’s still-stellar-in-spite-of-their-post-2013-output debut and maybe The Radio Dept.’s Clinging To A Scheme, especially as they’ve only released one full-length since (in 2016!)
Most of the selected tracks below are predictable (Belle and Sebastian, The New Pornographers and Goldfrapp on one of my year-end mixes? Who saw that coming?) Still, a few curveballs remain: actual pop/EDM hit “Stereo Love”, which I might’ve heard on Boston’s Kiss 108 while getting a haircut; “Shark In The Water”, one of my favorite one-hit-wonders (and it wasn’t even a hit here!); “This Charming Life”, Joan Armatrading’s best song in well over twenty years (not that I’ve heard much in the interim); and “Melancholy Beach”, a Gorillaz song you’d easily mistake for Blur in a blind listening test (I know, like most Gorillaz tunes.)
The early Obama era truly looks splendid now, if a bit naïve—a space where retro-soul (Fitz, Sharon Jones), eccentric art-pop (Field Music, Janelle Monae) and new wave-flavored side projects (Broken Bells, the track from Here Lies Love (more a disco pastiche, actually)) intersected and nobody gave a hoot as to whether they fit together: streaming was around the corner and for the most part, we were more than ready for it.
“Dancing On My Own”, however, completely owns this year (and I didn’t even hear it until that November at the earliest.) As solid as Robyn’s most recent album (2018’s Honey) is, nothing on it compares to what will always be her signature crying-on-the-dancefloor anthem, about which I would change absolutely nothing.
2010: Spinning Around In Circles
- The Divine Comedy, “At The Indie Disco”
- The New Pornographers, “Crash Years”
- Hot Chip, “Hand Me Down Your Love”
- Charlotte Gainsbourg, “Dandelion”
- VV Brown, “Shark In The Water”
- Belle & Sebastian, “I Didn’t See It Coming”
- Laura Marling, “Hope In The Air”
- Tracey Thorn, “Hormones”
- Vampire Weekend, “Giving Up The Gun”
- Broken Bells, “The Ghost Inside”
- Best Coast, “Boyfriend”
- Fitz and The Tantrums, “Breakin’ The Chains of Love”
- Corinne Bailey Rae, “Paris Nights/New York Mornings”
- David Byrne/Fatboy Slim feat. Theresa Andersson, “Ladies In Blue”
- Goldfrapp, “Alive”
- Graffiti 6, “Annie You Save Me”
- Janelle Monae, “Wondaland”
- Laura Veirs, “July Flame”
- KT Tunstall, “(Still A) Weirdo”
- Morcheeba, “Even Though”
- Spoon, “The Mystery Zone”
- Field Music, “Let’s Write A Book”
- Sade, “Soldier of Love”
- Edward Maya feat. Vika Jigulina, “Stereo Love”
- Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, “I Learned The Hard Way”
- Guster, “Architects & Engineers”
- The Gaslight Anthem, “American Slang”
- Gorillaz, “On Melancholy Hill”
- Robyn, “Dancing On My Own”
- The Radio Dept., “You Stopped Making Sense”
- Scissor Sisters, “Invisible Light”
- Joan Armatrading, “This Charming Life”
- Deerhunter, “Desire Lines”
- Arcade Fire, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”
- Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Bottled In Cork”
Haunted Jukebox 