Ladies and Gentlemen, the counting has finally stopped.  After three weeks of frantic-ish voting, and a blur of activity in Gobshout’s forums and inboxes, the results of our inaugural Top Singles and Albums Of The Year are in, and we don’t mind you telling you it was a close run thing in both.  So close that we had to get Carol ‘Could Do With The Work’ Vorderman in to double check our number crunching.  Thankfully we had got it right from the start, so we can hold our heads high and present what the readers, writers and members of Gobshout declare to be the best albums and singles of the year.   Below are the singles. Drumroll please....

1: MGMT- Kids    (Review here)

2: M.I.A- Paper Planes

3: Bon Iver- Skinny Love

4: Noah And The Whale- 5 Years Time

5: Sam Sparro- Black and Gold

6: Elbow- One Day Like This

7: Vampire Weekend- Oxford Comma

8: Coldplay- Violet Hill

9: Glasvegas- Daddy’s gone    (Review here)

10: Kings Of Leon- Use Somebody   (Review here)

In the end, ‘Kids’ was a convincing winner, and has a put in a pretty strong showing across other publications lists. It surely deserves to be top for sheer catchiness alone, with it’s duh-duh-duh’ing the musical equivalent of the Norovirus.  ‘Paper Planes’ was a somewhat surprising entry at number 2 (before voting we were pretty sure ‘Sex On Fire’ was going to nab one of the top spots), and all the more welcome for it.  It was also heartening to see the relatively low-selling ‘Skinny Love’ and ‘5 Years Time’ at 3 and 4 beating off (as it were) the Coldplay’s and Kings Of Leon’s of this world.

Of course those two did make the list further down, though again surprisingly not with the songs you might have expected (‘Viva La Vida’ and ‘Sex On Fire’ respectively). But then, there’s surely hundreds of songs that this could have been said of.  There’s no ‘Love Is Noise’ there, no ‘Spiralling’, no ‘Cassius’.  And while we’re at it, there may there not be many out there mourning the absence of ‘Machine Gun’, ‘Dancing Choose’ or ‘Standing Next To Me’? And no Radiohead?! We know ‘In Rainbows' wasn’t eligible, but ‘Nude’, ‘Reckoner’ and ‘House Of Cards’ all were.  Still, what’s life without surprises? ‘Kids’ it is, the top single of 2008, and a fine choice too.

The winner of their choice of an album with one of these singles on it is Paul Schofield, the lucky devil!

And what do you think of the list? Any glaring omissions? Gobshout members gone mad? 'Kids' even MGMT's best song? Let us know what you think here!

Posted In Features, Jan 06 2009. Words - Gobshout