It is no hardship...

This week I started to listen systematically to every 2008 album release that I own, and make notes, with the idea being to choose the ten or so that I think have mattered the most to me. It is most certainly a labour of love. (It does include albums released in 2007 elsewhere but not in the UK - and, as a balance, I'm also including albums I have that were released elsewhere in 2008 are but not yet on full release in the UK).
It is a larger task than I had presumed and you could say that I've manipulated the rules to suit my purposes but if they can do it on 'X Factor' then surely, in the absence of experts, it is my prerogotive too?
Last minute entries are always welcome, and there may be more yet, but I'm glad that I started this assignment when I did.

A full week of evenings spent listening wouldn't get through half of it and, from a purely practical aspect, necessities such as eating and sleeping make that quite impossible anyway. I also made some predictions for 2008 and so it is therefore only right that I should be held to account.

I think that I'm now settled on about half of it and, if the pattern is anything to go by, it is going to bear no more relationship to the charts - in the UK, the US or anywhere else - than it did last year. That is not to say that I don't listen to, or like, chart music because actually I do; I'll mention some that has caught my ear in 2008 in another post.
'Thoughts On Music 2008' certainly isn't over yet but 'Thoughts on Music 2009' already exists in my mind!