Best CDs of 2008

For the past month, NPR Music producer Lars Gotrich laid out multiple strips of paper on his desk, with names like Uncle Owen Aunt Beru, Extra Life and Erykah Badu printed on them. It turns out he was working on his list of the year's top CDs, analog-style. He shares his unique sense of music in this episode of All Songs Considered.

Cross-pollination of excellent musicians made for some amazing jazz in 2008. The year's best CDs feature numerous musicians collaborating with each other on a wide variety of recordings. Hearing the best musicians work with other geniuses is a wonderful thing to witness. Here are 10 of the best jazz CDs of the year.

One of the best years for kids' music in recent memory includes releases from artists with feet firmly in both kid-friendly and adult-oriented worlds. Old favorites went in new directions, while emerging artists gave a glimpse of the future of a genre as diverse and unpredictable as kids themselves.

This has been a strong year for African music, with two big trends emerging: the continuing integration of African music into the U.S. and European mainstream, as well as the ongoing unearthing of treasures from Afropop's "golden era," particularly the '70s.

Naturally, no year-end music list can be definitive, just as it's impossible to rate a year in music using purely objective measures of quality. So here are the 10 albums that Song of the Day editor Stephen Thompson treasured the most in 2008.

From the poetic playing of pianist Ingrid Fliter to the high notes (and high drama) of soprano Anna Netrebko, this group of talented musicians represents the next generation of emerging classical artists, most of whom are still in their 20s and 30s.

Whether openly or covertly, all music types love this time of year. It's list-making season. Those of us behind the Take Five series wanted to get in on the act, too. So we asked WBGO, WDUQ and Jazz24 to share their top picks of 2008 with a couple more from the series curators.

In the purely democratic world of hip-hop mixtapes unsigned rappers build a fan base, past-their-prime artists re-connect with an audience, and major-label commodities show their adventurous side on records that overprotective label reps would never authorize and commercial radio could never pick up. Here are some of this year's finest tapes.

It's been a great year for the quiet and the subtle: The harmonies of Fleet Foxes, the fiery gentleness of Bon Iver and the African kora of Toumani Diabate were all calming company. We all need and want different things from music at different times, and gentility won out this year.

It was an unusually strong year for great unknown artists. While bigger, more established bands continued to attract the most attention, smaller, lesser-known acts made the most memorable music of 2008. All of the great unknown artists featured here made music that was inspired, original and heartfelt.

When the votes started pouring in from NPR listeners for the year's best albums, two things became clear immediately: It was going to be tight, and many of the top spots would go to new, smaller bands and their debut albums. Bigger, more established acts (Coldplay, My Morning Jacket) were well represented, but listeners seemed more inspired by the year's quieter, more intimate albums.

Today's environmental and global financial crises have Weekend Edition's Ned Wharton abuzz. In presenting his yearly music recommendations, he explains how digital downloads make a perfect holiday gift for these times.

Now that the MP3 is king, vinyl has become something of an underground revolution. More and more artists have begun to insist on releasing their new albums on vinyl, and music fans who jettisoned their collections in favor of "clear, perfect digital sound CDs" are raiding garage sales and rediscovering analog music all over again. Here are 10 releases from 2008 that are worth the extra effort of vinyl.

The year's best jazz albums reach into your world rather than demanding that you reach into theirs, KPLU's Nick Francis says. Here, he picks 10 fun recordings with a contemporary attitude compliant to listeners' daily lives.