SCQ's Top Fifty Songs Of 2010

What’s interesting and completely flawed about Skeleton Crew Quarterly’s annual Top 50 Songs is that none of its ranking criteria ever firms up. Unlike the meticulously drafted Top Albums list, which eventually cements its order as definitive and unwavering, these fifty songs could continue stepping over one another and switching places for all eternity. At some point you just have to post it as it lies.

Not to say that this list is completely oblivious to hierarchy. Each of the top nine songs has been there for months, even if the odd couplet switched places, and the only recent changes for the remainder involved allocating space for November’s selections.

Compared to the strenuous testing that SCQ’s Top Albums list undergoes, I enjoy how impermanent this mini-feature is. It may have looked different yesterday and, odds are, the sequencing would again change next week if I let it but this final draft operates to the best of its ability at deadline – which is now.

1. Honeydrip – Alcoholic Faith Mission
2. Welt Am Draht – Pantha Du Prince
3. In Medias Res – Los Campesinos!
4. The Motion Makes Me Last – Eluvium
5. Nightmare No. 5 Or 6 – Electric President
6. Fern And Robin – Loscil
7. Turn It Off - Phantogram
8. No Big Hope – A Weather
9. The Suburbs – Arcade Fire
10. Hall - Baths
11. Standing In the Snow – Horse Stories
12. Long Flight – Future Islands
13. Magpies – Clare Burson
14. Chocolate Makes You Happy – Xiu Xiu
15. 2 Trees – Foals
16. All I Want – LCD Soundsystem
17. Your Head Is On Fire – Broken Bells
18. Twins – The Space Between Things
19. The Days Will Get Long Again – Former Ghosts
20. Atlas Air – Massive Attack
21. Soft Denial – MillionYoung
22. Wasteland – Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
23. Every Sunday – bitcrush (Winterlight Remix)
24. Min Enda Van – Dungen
25. Eyesore – Women
26. Alesund – Sun Kil Moon
27. Become What You Can’t Be – Gianna Lauren
28. Sundowning - Aqualung
29. Conversation 19 – The National
30. There Is a Wind – The Album Leaf
31. Red Sun No.5 – Owen Pallett
32. Love Is Fast (The Tragedy Of Kait Hagarty) – Grey Kingdom
33. Strange Language – New Idea Society
34. We Could Forever – Bonobo
35. Heirloom – Sufjan Stevens
36. Salt Silver Oxygen – Antony & the Johnsons
37. I Used To Do – Clogs
38. Anonymous Props – Super Visas
39. Feeling Lazy – Boy Is Fiction
40. Mountain Town – Glory Glory Man United
41. Golden Hair – Andre Obin
42. She Just Likes To Fight – Four Tet
43. Go Do - Jonsi
44. Mirrors - Crocodiles
45. Senium III – Kyle Bobby Dunn
46. Loss For Words - Solvent
47. Dream About Me – The Depreciation Guild
48. Washington – Sarah Harmer
49. Heart Of Gold – The Go Find
50. Gem – Matthew Dear