Welcome to the Top Forty of the Noughties

Nos 275 - 250	Nos 249 - 226	Nos 225 - 201
Nos 200 - 176	Nos 175 - 151	Nos 150 - 126
Nos 126 - 101	Nos 100 - 91	Nos 90 - 81
Nos 80 - 71	Nos 70 - 61	Nos 60 - 51
Nos 50 - 41	Nos 40 - 36	Nos 35 - 31
Nos 30 - 26	Nos 25 - 21	Nos 20 - 16
	Nos 15 - 11
	THE TOP TEN LIVE NOW - Apr/May 2017

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

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Greetings, Intercreatures.

You are asking why and I shall tell you. Envy is the reason for all of this.

Many years ago, as in somewhat contemporaneous with the decade of study, my good mate Dan G. issued forth with his own timely and erudite summation of his Top 200 tracks released in that feverish decade that comprised the first ten years of this new millennium.

So I started out in envy, thinking I could bang out my own considered version without too much heft.

Then, I discovered I'd actually stopped listened to new music somewhere round about 2006. I wasn't qualified to do a musical top forty.

And that fair enough exploded my head. How did THAT come about?

Fast forward to another moment when it all seems clearer. I don't keep up with new music because I don't want to. I'm now satisfied that there's enough music already in existence to keep me exploring for the rest of my life.

OK, so that changes THIS beast. Because this is now my grand farewell. A goodbye to sticky carpets, street press and radio rotation, a sloughing off of all the skin you acquire playing that game, and the identity that flows from that. I'm 42. The time's just right. From now on I make the stuff.

So if you want to know why I've only now managed to conjour this forth, fully half way into the subsequent decade, well you already have your answer.

Because hopefully, reflected in this list is the full measure of my appreciation for every tiny, myriad, complex joy music has ever given me. And that's a very large thing.

So to do this, there's been a lot of research into what the hell happened 2006-2010. And I've read every other 'best of the noughties' list ever hacked up on the internet. And every song I didn't know I had to go source, rate, spreadsheet, re-rate, have breakdown, fix it, decide it's perfect, sleep on it, and somehow next morning every single song on the list is STILL in the wrong position, and ...

You realise quickly this will never be finished, you realise it's permanently shifting sand. And it's not a top forty. There's 278 songs on it for starters. It's just a flipping list. But it's the quality list. It's a degustation. It's what the chefs cook for other chefs. It's the absolute motza.

Nobody else had Morrissey. Not a single other list had Morrissey.

So all the other lists are WRONG.

So I had to finish this because POSTERITY DEMANDS IT.

I want to draw all sorts of strands from this. I want to pinion the spirit of the times and survey it through its music. We'll do the top forty tracks in full, but we've a way to go before contemplating that. If we're gonna get there anytime soon, you have some large slabs of accumulated culture I need to start morseling your way.

Have a light lunch. I'll be back soon.

-Adam Ford
September 26, 2015