So in Joie’s recent post about The Czars, she refers to an album as being in her “top 10 all time.” If you’re willing to scroll through the comments and sift through the speculation regarding precisely who it is that doesn’t know what year it is, there’s a bit where we all bandy about the idea of creating our own top 10 lists.

Originally, this post was going to be my top 10 list. However, there was so much that I wanted to say about each album, and it was going to be way too long, so what I’ve decided I’m going to do is write a full review of each of them over the next week (or two, or three, depending on how fast I end up going). In true annoying, “suspense-building” fashion, I’ll start with 10 and go up to 1. I’m sure the discussion about what my number 1 album is will be the talk of the water-cooler set at your soul-crushing day job of choice.

But at any rate, I thought I’d set down the guidelines I’m using to select this list, so you know precisely where I’m coming from.

1. This is not a “best albums of all time” list. It is a “my favorite albums of all time” list. There is a difference. Although I believe that each of these albums are great, and I will tell you precisely why, I’m not going to give you some “objective criteria” where I take 5 points for the album’s cultural impact and 6 points for the quality of the songwriting and 2 points for the singer’s haircut, and so on. I’m going to write about the albums that I very well want to, thank you very much. I like London Calling and Pet Sounds and Revolver and OK Computer as much as the next guy — in fact, I own and listen to all of them — but none of them make the list. Because it’s my list, you see, and I don’t much care whether these albums made Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time or not. (For the record, none of them did, though a couple in my Top 15 or Top 20 are on there. And that list is an utter crock anyway. Have you ever tried to listen to Hotel California all the way through? The fact that that’s in their top 40 is enough to make you give up on them even before you see what egregious miscalculations they made in the 300s.)

2. I didn’t pick any compilation albums. Otherwise, too much of this list would have been boxed sets and best-ofs by my favorite bands. The album, the proper album, is an art form in and of itself, and that’s what I want to talk about.

3. I limited myself to one album per artist. This changed at least four of the spots in my top 10, by the way. I could write about why I think one band in particular made the best five-album sequence of any artist ever, but I think that’s less interesting somehow.

4. This isn’t a rule exactly, but most of these albums are relatively old. It has nothing to do with how much I like new music — wait a month, and you’ll get a chance to see me wax rhapsodic about my favorite albums of this year, which I will do at great length and detail. I think it has to do with the fact that I prefer to live with an album for a while, a long while even, before I’m willing to call it one of my top 10. It’s a spot for old friends. New ones have to work their way up.

Anyway, I’ll be getting around to this soon. Be forewarned.

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