I love year-end 10-best lists. I love getting tips on albums I had ignored or never heard of. I love watching my colleagues forced out of the comfort zone of easy generalizations such as "This is good" and "That is bad" and compelled to make the finer, more difficult distinctions between the "good," the "really good" and "the really, really good." I love to see how other listeners organize the chaos of a year's worth of music into the architectural order of a list. I love the story--or at least the psychological profile--that emerges.

What I don't like is all the whining that often accompanies these lists. Every year, I read critics who complain that pop music has reached a new nadir, that the golden age of the music (which always seems to have occurred while the writers were in college, no matter how old they are now) has degenerated into commercial cynicism, that there are hardly enough stellar records to justify a 10-best list. Meanwhile, I'm trying to fit 30 albums that I really love into the 10 slots an editor has given me.

So this year I convinced my editor at Sonicboomers.com to allow me to write about all the music I was enthusiastic about in 2008--a 100-best list rather than a 10-best list. Of course, such a list is possible only if one listens across as many genres as possible, for no format produces 100 terrific records in a single year. But my guiding principle--as a listener and as a critic--has always been: maximize pleasure. In search of that, I will go wherever the trail leads--to avant-garde jazz, to commercial hip-hop, to drummer-less string bands, to African dance bands, even, if need be, to indie-rock.

One could argue that comparing classical violin records with commercial country records is a case of apples and oranges. But one would be wrong. True criticism is not an assessment of how well an artist has fulfilled the conventions of a particular genre but of how intense is the emotional visceral connection between a work of art and an audience member. A critic should be able to ignore the expectations of form and compare the voltage of one such connection to another and rank them accordingly. At least, that's the challenge of a year-end list.

Here's the math: In 2008, I acquired more than 3,000 albums--most as record-company promos, some as purchases. Of those, I listened to more than 700 and wrote about more than 200. I would have given about 200 of them a grade of B+ or better (not necessarily the same ones I wrote about), and I've ranked the 100 best below.

Let the arguments begin.

Lila Downs: Shake Away (Manhattan) Like Los Lobos and Alejandro Escovedo, Downs begins with her parents' Mexican-American folk music, stiffens it with American rock&roll and adds political and psychological dimensions with Dylanesque poetry. The fact that she's based in Oaxaca rather than Los Angeles and Austin limits her American profile but not her effectiveness.

By Geoffrey Himes