MFR's Ultimate Comprehensive List of Year End Lists for 2008

Year End Lists are an extraordinary case study in trends and how music critics gather around to support their favorite releases of a given year. Although each list is unique, it is inevitable that a handful of universally loved artists will rise to the top of the indie-music pool. To distinguish who made the cut in 2008, we compiled a massive database comprised of the Top 50 lists of who we have determined to be the eight major music tastemakers today: Rolling Stone, SPIN, NME, Paste, MOJO, Uncut, Stereogum and Pitchfork. We omitted MFR from this list for some reason.

We pitted these lists against one another and treated each list as if it were a vote cast by the magazine or blog. Each placement was assigned a point value and we tallied the totals to see who came out victorious. The #1 position of each list was assigned a value of 50 points, consequently, #50 received 1 point (if the list only went to 40, #1 still got 50 points, we just stopped counting at 40).

As a result of all of this extraordinarily nerdy and tedious trek, we have come up with the Ultimate Comprehensive List of Year End Lists for 2008.

Click on the chart above to see how each title sized up.

Here are the Top 20 Releases that made this year's Ultimate Comprehensive List of Year End Lists:

#1: Fleet Foxes - "Fleet Foxes" (368 points)

*MP3: Fleet Foxes - "Blue Ridge Mountains"

#2: TV On The Radio - "Dear Science" (323 points)

*MP3: TV On The Radio - "Dancing Choose"

#3: Vampire Weekend - "Vampire Weekend" (310 points)

*MP3: Vampire Weekend - "Oxford Comma"

#4: Bon Iver - "For Emma, Forever Ago" (258 points)

*MP3: Bon Iver - "Skinny Love"

#5: Portishead - "Third" (257 points)

*MP3: Portishead - "The Rip"

#6: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - "Dig! Lazarus! Dig!" (257 points)

*MP3: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - "Jesus of the Moon"

#7: Santogold - "Santogold" (210 points)

*MP3: Santogold - "Shove It"

#8: The Hold Steady - "Stay Positive" (204 points)

*MP3: The Hold Steady - "Sequestered In Memphis"

#9: Deerhunter - "Microcastles" (195 points)

*MP3: Deerhunter - "Agoraphobia"

#10: Lil Wayne - "Tha Carter III" (185 points)

*MP3: Lil Wayne - "A Milli"

#11: MGMT - "Oracular Spectacular" (173 points)

*MP3: MGMT - "Time To Pretend"

#12: Hot Chip - "Made In The Dark" (172 points)

*MP3: Hot Chip - "Ready For The Floor"

#13: Beck - "Modern Guilt" (169 points)

*MP3: Beck - "Modern Guilt"

#14: Kings of Leon - "Only By The Night" (166 points)

*MP3: Kings of Leon - "Sex on Fire"

#15: No Age - "Nouns" (152 points)

*MP3: No Age - "Teen Creeps"

#16: Fucked Up - "The Chemistry of Common Life" (140 points)

*MP3: Fucked Up - "No Epiphany"

#17: Coldplay - "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends" (131 points)

*MP3: Coldplay - "Viva la Vida"

#18: Girl Talk - "Feed the Animals" (129 points)

*MP3: Girl Talk - "Set It Off"

#19: My Morning Jacket - "Evil Urges" (111 points)

*MP3: My Morning Jacket - "I'm Amazed"

#20: Okkervil River - "The Stand Ins" (108 points)

*MP3: Okkervil River - "Lost Coastlines"