Favorite Songs of '07

Counting down my favorite songs of the year was a new tradition I started last December, and for the past two weeks I've been working on determining this year's top 20.  I just went back to last year's introduction to see how I explained the whole tricky process, and I think a little self-quoting is in order, because this is still exactly how I feel:

"...I decided that this year, in addition to writing about my favorite albums of 2006, I would write about the twenty songs that have highlighted the soundtrack to the past twelve months of my life.  I also decided to rank them, so I can do a countdown leading up to Christmas, and I quickly found that creating such a list is incredibly, completely and insanely difficult. Loving a song is easy - hell, I have a new "favorite" song every few days - but to take one specific song that I adore and try to determine whether I love it more or less than another is, well... tough.  I know that the way I rank these songs matters very little to anyone other than me, but the thing is, in creating this list I ended up with this perfect, perfect mix. And when I listen to it straight through from #20 to #1, it's just this amazing, slowly intensifying ball of musical happiness that I think I could listen to forever."

The 2006 version of me hit it right on the nose - this year's list has the exact same intensifying ball of musical happiness kind of feel.  As well it should - every one of these songs is fantastic, and spent a fair amount of time on repeat in the past eleven months.  Once again, I know there are a few songs I'm leaving out - tracks that sound best in the context of an album, songs by artists I didn't want to include twice on this list, etc. - but I feel good saying that these are my twenty favorite songs of 2007.  Hope you love them as much as I do!