Good Songs Don’t Have Release Dates

Not all of these are technically from 2008—I suspect most of them aren’t—but a year-end list was never really about the calendar anyway. It’s about when the songs found you, and what they found you doing. This is what 2008 sounded like from where I was standing.

Ladyhawke’s debut was the one I couldn’t quit. That album—all synth gloss and guitar grit, like someone had reconstructed the eighties from memory and slightly gotten it wrong in all the right ways—sat in rotation for most of the autumn. "My Delirium" still lives in some back room of my brain, playing quietly. The Ting Tings were the opposite: loud and immediate and allergic to subtlety. "That’s Not My Name" is practically onomatopoeic in its irritation and its pleasure.

Lykke Li was the one that hurt. Youth Novels arrived with a kind of bruised precision—that specific register of longing that’s just barely keeping itself together. "Little Bit" as a declaration of want is almost embarrassingly accurate. And Santogold, before the name change, before she became a brand reference in a hundred think-pieces, just sounded like the sharpest thing in the room. Her debut had edges everywhere and enough groove to make you forget you were being cut.

These were the songs I ran into 2009 on. Whatever that year turned out to be, it started with a good soundtrack.