we’ve spent the better part of the last 12 months watching the dog and pony show that is known as the republican primary season. this entire process has been, to say the least, entertaining to behold. this is quite the crop of candidates. i mean that in the so-painful-to-watch-yet-so-awesome sense of the word.

i’ll reserve much political commentary in this post. quite frankly, i have plenty of opinions of the republican field, but regardless of who wins the nominee, i’ll be voting for barack obama. and i really think you should also.

2011 was a good year for music. not necessarily a great year, but certainly a good year for music. it featured quite a few surprises and new discoveries and also had its fair share of albums that were highly anticipated. personally, i haven’t anticipated albums as much as i did elbow’s build a rocket boys and kanye/jay-z’s watch the throne (among others) in quite some time.

much the same as last year, there’s a handful of albums that i expect to be great albums. and while it’s always dangerous to inflate expectations to non-attainable levels, i’ve narrowed down a list of nearly 50 albums to 12 that i am eagerly anticipating this year.

i’ve broken down the list into 2 categories: confirmed (or as close to confirmed as possible) and i’m-not-holding-my-breath-but-this-rumor-is-worth-believing. first, the confirmed albums:

in 31 years of life, i’ve never made a single new year’s resolution. it’s not that i don’t think it’s a good idea to set some goals, but more that i could easily set some goals on the 1st of march or august or whatever month…and i don’t do that either.

a new year, though, does offer a good opportunity to look ahead and embrace a fresh start. certainly, the analogy of new life is one that is particularly salient right now. so how about we begin the year on the blog with a post about death?

year number 3 of blogging is about to come to an end. it’s been an up and down year. there were times when i thought i finally hit my stride and there were other times i was ready to shut down the site and pretend it all never happened. but 107 posts later (in 2011), i’m still plugging away.

each year, i like to take a look back—more out of curiousity than anything—and see which posts were most read. it never fails that that list is comprised both of posts i could’ve predicted (news-worthy or “controversial” posts) and things i would’ve never guessed.

so, here’s the list of the 10 most read posts on my blog for 2011.

over the course of this week, i’ve been posting my annual best of lists. as a complete list nerd, this is my favorite time of the year here on the ol’ blog. here’s the lists i’ve been posting:

tuesday: best new music discoveries
wednesday: cover songs
thursday: songs
today: albums

the granddaddy of all the end-of-year music lists is the best albums. so here we are.

over the course of this week, i’ll be posting my annual best of lists. as a complete list nerd, this is my favorite time of the year here on the ol’ blog. here’s the lists i’ll be posting:

tuesday: best new music discoveries
yesterday (wednesday): cover songs
today: songs
tomorrow (friday): albums

the last couple days—with best new discoveries and cover songs—have been list appetizers. but now we’ve reached the main courses: songs and albums (we’ll get to albums tomorrow). i’ve listened to, um, a few songs this year. and while many were good, there were a select list of great songs. from grunge rock veterans to luxury rappers, here’s the songs that made 2011 a great year for music:

over the course of this week, i’ll be posting my annual best of lists. as a complete list nerd, this is my favorite time of the year here on the ol’ blog. here’s the lists i’ll be posting:

yesterday (tuesday): best new music discoveries
today: cover songs
tomorrow (thursday): songs
friday: albums

i assume that if you don’t love a good cover, then you must hate america. they’re great. while there’s a whole lot of bad covers, there’s always a good list (my initial list before narrowing them down was about 48 songs) of great cover songs each year. from youtube sensations to old country singers trying something new, here’s my list of 2011′s best cover songs: