Trotter's Top Fifty of the Noughties

Those of you who’ve known me for a while will know that I put together a top ten list of singles and albums of the year just coming to an end (preferably before most of the music media does exactly the same so that I can look ever so slightly original) and I call these Trotter’s Top Tens in a Ronseal sort of fashion.

This isn't my list!

I do this for my own sick list-making pleasure, your amusement, ridicule and agreement* and to start a debate on my favourite topic - music, that is, not top tens. This always throws up some interesting chatter and can also lead to discovering work from artists that may have passed me by or I’d not given much shrift to previously.

Towards the end of last year I started thinking about doing a round-up of the decade intending to put it out just after the 2009 top tens. Unfortunately, work, life and well...Christmas got in the way and I only just managed to get the 2009 list out let alone start the mammoth task of reviewing a decade’s worth (music mags have a team of staff to do theirs remember!) Q even called theirs 'the review of the century’, which I suppose while strictly true, is a tad premature. Boy, are they going to be embarrassed come 2099.

I then thought I’d do it during that ‘quiet’ time after New Year but somehow couldn’t be bothered to go through it all when all the media had put their lists out. So I put it off...and off...and off.

Thing is, if I don’t do it now, before starting the 2010 list then it’s just never going to happen and have pretty much no relevance whatsoever – already some of the 2000 albums seem like ancient rock history believe me.

So, over the course of the next month or so I’ll be counting down the top 50 albums of the ‘00’s (2000-2009) at something approaching one or two a day (so, yes, I’m making it up as I go along).

As always, there’s rules in them thar hills – all the albums are ones that were previously in my Top Tens of the year. This is firstly to keep me sane by limiting my choices, but also to make me stick by the choices I made in the first place and stop me from shoehorning in kewl stuff like Burial’s ‘Untrue’ just because it made the Observer’s Top Ten. It also means though, that there are notable absences from the Libertines, MIA, Fleet Foxes, The Streets, Queens of the Stone Age – all folks that never made the cut in the first place, some of which probably even deserved it – but I couldn’t listen to everything could I? Even now I’m still guilt-tripping over not including The Longcut, Hot Chip, The Raconteurs – all of which DID make my top tens but there just wasn’t the room – sorry chaps.

Secondly I’m allowing more than one album from an artist. It doesn’t seem fair to ‘just pick one’ if someone’s output is so much better than the competition does it? Because of this, there are 39 artists featured in the Top Fifty – which still isn’t too bad a haul I don’t think. There’s a fair spread over the decade too – 2000, 2001 and 2007 seem to have delivered especially well, though only two have survived from 2006’s top ten so let’s all make a note to not time-travel back to that year when we get the chance shall we?

I'll also be putting links to videos where they exist after each entry and a smattering of tracks I'm putting together on Spotify for those of you that are down with that sort of thing.

So with a fair bit of ado, the starters for ten...er, fifty, will follow shortly...

* I’m counting silence as agreement alright!!