Albums of the Year, 1978-2025

(This is an updated version of my original post, adding this year’s pick and a new paragraph, plus other edits.)

My much-ballyhooed “Album of the Year” is an honorific I’ve bestowed on one album (sometimes two) every year since beginning my journey into music fandom. I started the practice one night in December 1978, when I was 13, by jotting the name of my favorite LP of the year on a piece of looseleaf paper. I did the same the next December, and the December after that, and the December after that. In time, I transferred the list to typing paper, entered it into our first computer, saved it to a floppy disc and, in the late 2000s, moved it to an external hard drive and then the Cloud, where it shares space with all my other Pages documents.

For the longest time, that’s all it was – a list that I returned to every year to add another line. No muss, no fuss, and no explanations as to why. Even when I oversaw the original Old Grey Cat website in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, I never wrote year-end summations of my favorites—I was too busy critiquing Neil Young bootlegs. It wasn’t until 2008 on Facebook that I posted my top picks for the year. On and off over the next few years, I followed with similar missives until launching this blog as occasional essays on the Hatboro-Horsham Patch in 2012. (I moved to wordpress.com in mid-2014.)

Crowd-sourcing best-of lists, as the music magazines and websites do, is all well and good, and—depending on the cross-section of critics chosen to participate—often speaks to the zeitgeist of the moment, but the fun—for me—is in surveying the picks of everyday bloggers. Some lean on the analytical and clinical, attacking the endeavor as an intellectual endeavor: What album(s) advanced the art form—or shook its foundations? Upended public sentiment? Others favor the popular over the little-known. And a few, and I include myself here, enjoy the niches. As Neil Young famously wrote about the middle of the road, “Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.”

I think I best explained the way I go about it in this 2010 post: “The candidates are drawn from what I’ve purchased, so the pool is decidedly limited in comparison to, say, what the writers at Rolling Stone or Allmusic.com are exposed to. Some years I buy a lot and some years not, primarily due to my listening habits – I play albums I love over and over and over until they become one with my subconscious (obsession, not variety, is my spice of life). So the more I like certain albums, the less overall I hear.” I added this addendum in 2019: “The explosion of streaming music has caused the need to spend money moot, but time is the new currency. And few of us have a lot of that to spend.” (That said, I still buy a fair bit.)

That’s not to say I’d make the same selections now as I did way back when. I was and am a major Paul McCartney fan, but London Town and Back to the Egg weren’t his best, let alone the best of their respective years. Nowadays, I’d likely pick Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town as my No. 1 and Bob Seger’s Stranger in Town as my No. 2 for ’78; and Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps as my No. 1 and Rickie Lee Jones’ self-titled debut as my No. 2 for ’79. I’d re-do quite a few other picks, too. In 2012, for instance, I was simply smitten with Susanna Hoff’s perfect solo effort, Someday – I still am, but Neil Young’s Psychedelic Pill has received far more play in the years since.

But that’s all beside the point. The list, as I see it, is less a critical exercise and more a chronicle of the evolution (or lack thereof) of my musical taste, silly as it sometimes is, and is evidence of of my simultaneously suburban and idiosyncratic tastes. Where possible, I’ve linked to past blog posts about each of the albums or artists.

• 2025 – Kassi Valazza – From Newman Street
• 2024 – Kaitlin Butts – Roadrunner!
• 2023 – Mikaela Davis – And Southern Star
• 2022 – The Dream Syndicate – Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions
• 2021 – Paul Weller: Fat Pop (Volume 1) Deluxe Edition
• 2020 – Bruce Springsteen – Letter to You (1); Courtney Marie Andrews – Old Flowers (2)
• 2019 – Allison Moorer – Blood (1); Bruce Springsteen – Western Stars (2)
• 2018 – Juliana Hatfield – Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John
• 2017 – Courtney Marie Andrews – Honest Life (1); Juliana Hatfield – Pussycat (2)
• 2016 – Rumer – This Girl’s in Love: A Bacharach & David Songbook
• 2015 – The Staves – If I Was
• 2014 – First Aid Kit – Stay Gold
• 2013 – Susanna Hoffs & Matthew Sweet – Under the Covers Vol. III
• 2012 – Susanna Hoffs – Someday (1); Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Psychedelic Pill (2)
• 2011 – Juliana Hatfield – There’s Always Another Girl
• 2010 – Tift Merritt – See You on the Moon (1); Rumer – Seasons of My Soul (2)
• 2009 – Diane Birch – Bible Belt
• 2008 – Juliana Hatfield – How to Walk Away
• 2007 – Maria McKee – Late December
• 2006 – The Dixie Chicks – Taking the Long Way
• 2005 – Juliana Hatfield – Made in China
• 2004 – Juliana Hatfield – in exile deo
• 2003 – Maria McKee – High Dive
• 2002 – Neil Young – Are You Passionate?
• 2001 – Natalie Merchant – Motherland
• 2000 – Juliana Hatfield – Beautiful Creature
• 1999 – Natalie Merchant – Live in Concert
• 1998 – Lucinda Williams – Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
• 1997 – Steve Earle – El Corazon
• 1996 – Neil Young – Broken Arrow; Maria McKee – Life Is Sweet (tie)
• 1995 – Natalie Merchant – Tigerlily
• 1994 – Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Sleeps with Angels
• 1993 – Maria McKee – You Gotta Sin to Get Saved
• 1992 – 10,000 Maniacs – Our Time in Eden
• 1991 – Mary Black – Babes in the Wood
• 1990 – Rosanne Cash – Interiors
• 1989 – Neil Young – Freedom
• 1988 – Steve Earle – Copperhead Road
• 1987 – 10,000 Maniacs – In My Tribe
• 1986 – Paul Simon – Graceland; Bangles – Different Light (2)
• 1985 – Lone Justice – self-titled debut (1); Long Ryders – State of Our Union (2)
• 1984 – The Go-Go’s – Talk Show; Prince – Purple Rain (2)
• 1983 – Neil Young – Trans
• 1982 – Paul McCartney – Tug of War
• 1981 – Neil Young & Crazy Horse – re*ac*tor (1) / Go-Go’s – Beauty & the Beat (2)
• 1980 – Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band – Against the Wind
• 1979 – Wings – Back to the Egg
• 1978 – Wings – London Town