Show of hands, everyone who is surprised this is No. 1.

​Music writers all know that once they get their Village Voice Pazz & Jop ballot in their e-mail inbox, that it's time to tally their loves from the last year. It's sort of like the leaves changing or the first freeze of winter coming. You get a message from Voice music ed Rob Harvilla and it's time to get to work on your lists of best albums and singles of the year.

This year the big album winners were Kanye West, LCD Soundsystem, and Arcade Fire, following the lead of most other 2010 lists. On the singles end, we loved Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You" almost unanimously.

West would end up taking three slots himself in the singles chart. The only West albums not to top the P&J poll have been Graduation and 808s & Heartbreak. He seems to be a critical darling, if not for his communication skills.

Rocks Off has been voting in the P&J for forever now, it seems, or at least since we first put out our shingle here at the Houston Press and Village Voice Media. Each year it's fun to see what all the other taste arbiters in your world were listening to all year, and judge whether or not they are just putting them on their list to look cool.

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​Nielsen SoundScan released its annual report on music sales Monday, and the results were less than surprising. Physical sales continued to decline, digital sales continued to rise, and crap pop continues to reign supreme both at the cash register and on the airwaves.

During the period of Jan. 4, 2010 to Jan. 2, 2011, overall sales came in at 1.507 billion units, down 2.5 percent from 2009's total of 1.545 billion. Total album sales dropped almost 13 percent to 326.2 million, while digital album sales rose 13 percent to 86.3 million. Physical album sales dropped 19 percent to 240 million units sold.

To put that in perspective, that means every man, woman and child in the U.S. bought almost five units of recorded music in 2010, based on the census bureau's reported population of a little more than 308 million.

Sales of vinyl LPs continued to rise, up another 14 percent to 2.8 million units from 2.5 million in 2009, accounting for a whopping 1 percent of overall sales. Seventy-one percent of vinyl sales came from independent record stores, which in turn recorded about 7 percent of overall sales.

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​Editor's Pick: To "support the scene" more in 2011. Just kidding.

Marc Brubaker: Houston, I have a confession to make. As far as music writers go, this one is pretty bad, too: I have a terrible habit of sleeping on bands just because they are popular. Often, when a new band picks up a lot of collective buzz, I'll simply ignore them, usually revisiting them when the hype has died down.

Case in point: I passed on The National until High Violet was nearly upon us, and even then I only dug up their album Alligator - which is amazing. I still have yet to listen to Local Natives, or several other bands that folks were fawning over this year. However, I vow to end this terrible transgression in 2011, just don't get angry the first time I pan something that everybody seems to love.

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Faith Silva

​Editor's Pick: The renewed, and continuing, interest of local indie-rockers and hipsters (and people who are a long way from neither) in traditional honky-tonk as played by Robert Ellis & the Boys and as documented by a certain Lonesome Onry and Mean and myself this summer. Encouraging, refreshing and amusing.

Marc Brubaker: This one goes to Cee-Lo Green's cover of Band of Horses "No One's Gonna Love You." Not only is it kick-ass - thanks to Green's exquisite, goosebump-inducing pipes, but also it was completely out of left field. Was anybody expecting this? Hardly.

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Editor's Pick: It was probably Uncle Tupelo's Anodyne, same as last year. So how about Nirvana's In Utero, which I dragged out of mothballs when we did our article about Nevermind's anniversary in September. In Utero fried my hair all over again, and then got me thinking about the band's cover of Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" from MTV Unplugged In New York... so I'll say that.

Marc Brubaker: Every Time I Die, The Big Dirty. Zeppelin's "Out On The Tiles." Billy Joel. Dan Deacon. Festivals. Distortion pedals. Reverb. Vinyl. Hell, I don't know. Probably the Internet, because of the way it facilitates musical discovery and connections these days. This is such an insane question to attempt to answer. I simply love music, the joy and freedom both inherent within it and that it brings to both the performer and listener. I've got far too many favorites to simply select one thing.

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​Editor's Pick: I'm tempted to say myself on this one. I just didn't connect to a lot of music this year. Especially new music, most of which I was either indifferent to or outright loathed. I'm not really the navel-gazing type, though, so I'll just chalk it up to an off year and move on. I doubt you could find a whole lot of critics who could make a case 2010 was the best year for music ever anyway. Or would want to.

On the other hand, I could not be prouder of the work Rocks Off as a whole did this year. I read a lot of other music blogs, and I think we have the best in the city (easily), the state, the region and maybe even the entire U.S. I just want all of them, and all of you, to know that.

Marc Brubaker: People talking at shows! If you paid good money to go see a show, shut the fuck up and watch the show. No one wants to hear you jawing away in the crowd, talking about whatever the hell you think is more important than the band on stage. Take it outside, or in the next room at least. It's amazing how Houston is perfectly content to waste its money talking through a show they paid to see.

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Marco Torres

​Editor's Picks:

Mary J. Blige, Reliant Stadium (RodeoHouston), March: Exquisite.

Beach House, Walter's on Washington, April: Can't hate on this one either. Magical.

Wu-Tang Clan, Numbers, December: Against all odds, they brought the motherfuckin' ruckus.

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​Editor's Pick: Shit. I spent my whole year either avoiding or ignoring trends. No reason to change now.

Marc Brubaker: Many a person instructed me to place Ke(Dollar Sign)ha in this spot, but she's become so ubiquitous that I can't help but laugh when I hear her now. No, fine sirs, this award is reserved for famous people doing features for Justin Bieber. Why oh why is everyone coming out of the woodwork to guest on his songs? Of course the answer is money, but this just smacks me as a perfect example of everything wrong with the way major labels operate.

John Seaborn Gray: Chillwave. Sorry, but privileged white kids with top-of-the-line synthesizers will never be interesting. If you're still into chillwave, consider abusing less prescription medication and waking the hell up.

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​Editor's Picks:

Jamey Johnson, "Lonely at the Top": Ouch.

Merle Haggard, "I've Seen It": Double ouch.

Patty Griffin, "Move On Up": Help me, Jesus. Please.

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Jason Wolter

​Editor's Pick: I am so sick of complaining about Houston crowds, ill-behaved as they are, but I will say to whoever decided it would be funny to take Bobby Bare Jr.'s glasses off the stage at Hayes Carll's Warehouse show Tuesday night and put them on: That was not cool.

Neph Basedow: Considering I only moved to Houston from Chicago in October, my options are limited - which I deem a good thing, considering the high frequency of shows I've attended since arriving. I'd have to say I was disappointed in the (majority) of the crowd at October's Built to Spill show at House of Blues. Anyone who attended or read the review will already know the crowd was scolded by a usually taciturn Doug Martsch, for incessantly talking through the band's set.

Not to say there weren't true Built to Spill fans in the crowd - there were; I was one of them - but overall, the crowd was a disappointing dud.

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