Here we go, top albums of the decade. For a long time, I’ve stressed that I’m never trying to make actual “best of” lists, because that’s impossible. But for these ones, I’ve made it known for a while that my approach was going to be even more unusual: Basically, I took all the albums from the previous 10 years of top tens, added a few more that I found out about at the wrong time, and started dividing them into groups. When I had 10 groups, I picked my favorite five album in each group, then my number one of those. Then, when I had all 10 winners, I ranked them somewhat arbitrarily… I guess just overall in terms of how much I like them now.

For me, this was the only way I could take on such a daunting task, and it resulted in a top five I’m extremely confident in, and a 6-10 that feels pretty good. Unfortunately, I skew toward the beginning of the decade, which I think mostly reflects that I’ve had more time with those albums and less that more recent music isn’t as good – because it is, check the honorable mentions in each section. It also doesn’t help that I’ve never been very confident in defending my own taste in music, and it’s only slightly comforting that I had a full decade of top 10 lists on this blog to fall back on for references as I wrote this. I guess what I’m saying is take it easy and please don’t be mean. I’m trying my best.

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I don’t like doing “End of the Decade” lists. There’s such a finality to it. How can I claim to have found the ten best albums for me when there’s still so much to discover? The fact that I struggled to find ten albums I could call my favorites just goes to show the journey isn’t over.

That being said I do love these ten albums… for the time being. We’ll see how these selections settle in the next ten years. I like to take my time with albums. Spend several years with them and let ‘em stew. This is why I have no albums from 2019. Not enough time has passed. Which means these tens albums I have picked are special. They have stood the test of time. Now let’s open up the capsule.

P.S. I decided to include YouTube videos instead of pics so you can listen to some of my favorite jams. Enjoy!

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Well, unlike some other media, it would be hard to make a case that 2019 was the year of the decade for video games. With aging hardware and new consoles looming on the horizon, this last year was all about keeping on keeping on. Games as a service continues to be a thing, with the added wrinkle that game subscription services really hit their stride with the massive success of Xbox Game Pass. I guess it sort of became a year about catching up with stuff for best of the decade and wrapping up this console generation. It didn’t help that some of the year’s most exciting titles either disappointed (Anthem) or slipped into 2020 (DOOM Eternal). Oh well, plenty to look forward in the months to come!

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Both John and Colin talked about how unusually good this year was at the cinema, so I gotta admit: there are a lot of good movies I haven’t seen yet due to an unusually hectic December and January. Given that it’s award season, it stings that I haven’t seen prestige pictures like 1917 and Little Women, indie darlings like The Souvenir and The Last Black Man in San Francisco, foreign films like Pain and Glory and Ash is Purest White, or literally any 2019 documentaries.

But! I did see a lot of shitty movies. I went to the movies with my dad most Tuesdays last year, and that meant I saw some real clunkers, like Men in Black: International, Dark Phoenix, and Terminator: Dark Fate. It also meant I got to spend more time with my family and see a lot of my favorite movies of the year more than once, so I wouldn’t change a thing. In fact, it even helped me pick up on a pattern in cinema this year: If 2017 was the year of the mom, 2019 was the year of the dad.

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