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?

another couple months have passed by, so it’s time to once again bring you two in review. the past couple months have been a little slow in terms of new music. nevertheless, there’s still been some good music and a couple highly anticipated albums. as always, i hope this is the springboard for you to discover the fullness of these artists’ albums and catalogues.

here’s the lineup for 2011′s final edition:

it is finished.

derek’s webb 2nd year of crowd-sourced covers has reached a conclusion with today’s release. if you haven’t bought this album yet, please allow me direct you to derek’s store where you can purchase the album. it’s only $5, which is a ridiculously low price for this collection. the other great thing about purchasing right now is that you don’t have to wait an entire month for each track. you’ll get it all at once!

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.

yesterday, the 25 days of christmix came to an end. before beginning, i wasn’t quite sure if i could sustain 25 straight days or, quite frankly, if i would tire of christmas music. as previously stated, i’m just not a huge fan of christmas music, but i found this to be sorta refreshing. i hope you felt the same.

a couple weeks ago, guest blogger bekah caraway submitted sufjan stevens’ o come o come emmanuel…which was on my original schedule for today’s track. it’s my favorite christmas song and i wanted it to culminate the collection, today on christmas.

instead of changing songs, though, i decided to simply change artists. the song is not only beautiful, but really expresses everything that is deeply meaningful to me this time of the year.