Ah, Top Ten Lists: is anything more a part of Pop Music? Ever since the first Top Forty Countdown was initiated, pop fans have been conditioned - whether by Your Hit Parade or Casey Kasem - into quantifying their likes and dislikes in list format. Like the gang at Championship Vinyl, we all love to catalog.

I'm no different. Prodded by Eric to come up with a Best o' Ten, I was ready to do so. So here's This Season's Most Played Pop-Rock List. I am not including those new releases I've been overplaying because of unfamiliarity; these are all older releases that have stood my personal test of time. (Caution: this list is subject to change as soon as I look at my shelves again):

The Best of Blur: No wacky/pointless instrumental experiments, no forays into dubland, just eighteen primo examples of guitar-based Britpop from the smartest of the nineties practitioners. If "Tender" isn't the sweetest use of acoustic strumming since "My Sweet Lord," then I'm tendering my resignation in the Village Green Preservation Society;

John Cale, Fear: In a solo career marked by inconsistent releases, this is the one I wanna keep with me: the former Velvet Undergrounder collaborating with members of Roxy Music to produce some of the fiercest music of his career (and that's including the 2nd VU album). Beware: pissed-off intellectual with a gun;

Elvis Costello, This Year's Model: And speakin' of pissed, how about ol' Elvis back when he was a skinny bespectacled nerd with bad teeth & the Attractions for back-up? And, considering the climate, isn't "Night Rally" more than a little scarily prescient? "Oh I know that I'm ungrateful; I've got it lying on a plate;"

Go-Betweens, 16 Lovers Lane: I've recently raved about this album on my own blog, but I'm still caught under its autumnal sway, so here I go, mentioning it again. Proof that grown-up pop-rock is not only possible, it's desirable;

Nick Lowe, Labour of Lust: And then there's Nick, unrepentantly half-a-boy-and-half-a-man, with his greatest set of Rockpile collaborations ever. Alterna-country band The Meat Purveyors recently covered "Without Love" from this set; in a just cosmos, every one of these songs would've been a covered pop hit years ago: even the one about the girl with a "pair of tits that just won't quit;"

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