December 5, 2010 
This has been one hell of a year for music. Plenty of enduring acts have released some of their best work to date, other up and coming bands have established themselves with strong debut albums, and a ton of new and exciting acts have also emerged both from the international scene and in Australia.
It’s always hard picking your favourite songs of a year, but for me 2010 really did have a crop of music that stood out above the rest. That being said, these songs are merely my personal favourites from the year- the songs I have enjoyed and played the most. The title of this post is more for search engine optimization than anything, I don’t make any claims about these songs being the most successful or most influential of the year.
As always problems arose over just what can be considered a song of 2010, but ultimately I just went with songs that were released in studio form this year.
Anyway, I wanted to do something a bit different from a generic list, so click on any of the banner images to be taken to a page with a clip of the song in question and a short writeup by me, then just click ‘Back’ in your browser to come back to the main list. Or don’t, whatever.
As you can hopefully tell I have put a fair bit of effort into this, so I’d really appreciate you sharing the link (http://wp.me/pGd3A-py) around however you see fit and/or leaving a response about what you agreed with and what you didn’t (preferably on this main post). Without further ado, here’s the list of my top 20 songs of 2010.
#20
#19
#18
#17
#16
#15
#14
#13
#12
#11
#10
#9
#8
#7
#6
#5
#4
#3
#2
#1
Also Pretty Cool (No Order):
Jonathan Boulet – You’re A Animal
Arcade Fire – We Used To Wait
The John Steel Singers – Overpass
Little Red – Rock It
Freelance Whales – Enzymes
The Jezabels – Mace Spray
The Bedroom Philosopher – New Media
Los Campesinos! – (All’s Well That Ends) In Media Res
Jinja Safari – Peter Pan
Antonio Paul – City Dreams
LCD Soundsystem – Dance Yrself Clean
Hungry Kids Of Hungary – The Vacationer
Yeasayer – Ambling Alp
Tunng – Hustle
The Temper Trap – Fools (Peter, Bjorn, And John Remix)
And Pluck Your Strings 
Hey man,
Great great list. Did you do all the pics? Very impressive!
I’m in the process of putting my list together and seriously don’t know where to begin!
Thanks man, yeah made the pics myself, I like little image editing like this and had a bit of spare time after uni exams. I started with a shortlist of like 200 songs haha, it’s definitely not easy. Albums are going to be a challenge as well.
Dude, awesome work on representing every song with a graphic! nicely done. You must sincerely be passionate about getting people to hear these all. I’m very prolific like you when it comes to reviewing and listening to a shitload of new music as it comes out, and we have similar taste, however I haven’t even heard some of the songs in your list, so I’m gunna ask you a favour — knowing you have all these, can you make a Torrent link or something where we can download a zipfile of the AndPluckYourStrings 2010 Mixtape – Best Cuts?!?!? That would be RAD-TASTIC. I’d share it around. One tiny omission that you should have put in there was Under The Ocean by The Boat People ;)
Thanks man, appreciate it. I’ve definitely considered this but I suppose have avoided it now because of legal technicalities- I’m definitely looking into it though.
Great list, few tracks that weren’t on my radar that I really dug. I’ve started trying to do a list too but haven’t been able to whittle it down to 20 yet. Here’s my 1st draft of a Top 10
1. Tighten Up – The Black Keys
2. The Suburbs – Arcade Fire
3. Shadow People – Dr. Dog
4. Conversation 16 – The National
5. Trigger Finger – You Am I
6. Kids on the Run – Tallest Man on Earth
7. We Like War – The Bon Scotts
8. It’s All my Fault – Nicholas Roy
9. Hurt Me – The Jezabels
10. Written in Reverse – Spoon
Cheers Tim, it’s definitely a challenge. Great list, I totally forgot about Dr Dog. Hurt Me was last year though I think? Anyway regardless, cool stuff.
Pretty impressive list – good work. Particularly like #17 Last Dinosaurs (great set at Stonefest), #16 Boy & Bear (they got a nod from Mumford & Sons at their OAF show back in Feb), #7 Darren Hanlon (big fan of all his work) and #6 Two Door (cracking album). I’d have put The John Steel Singers and Hungry Kids Of Hungary in the top 20 but you can’t include everything.
Did you see Faster Louder claiming the new Future of the Left song was a late contender for best song of the year?
That’s cause its awesome, but it won’t win because its a demo. The album is not out til next year.
Not a bad list. Though, if you haven’t heard the Otouto album, thoroughly recommended. My favourite record of the year.
Agreed on Otouto, my #2 album after The National. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Nice list mate. x
Okay I’m thinking I definitely need to check out this album.