Following on from our Top Ten Albums of 2011 feature of the last few weeks, we can now reveal the full top 40 as voted for by our readers, writers and editors. Check them out below, and let us know what shocks you in the comments!
1. The Vaccines — What Did You Expect from The Vaccines?
2. Radiohead — The King of Limbs
3. Metronomy — The English Riviera
4. Bon Iver — Bon Iver, Bon Iver
6. Florence and the Machine — Ceremonials
7. PJ Harvey — Let England Shake
According to Metacritic, Let England Shake topped the 'best of 2011' lists of 16 publications.
9. Frank Turner — England Keep My Bones
10. Bombay Bicycle Club — A Different Kind of Fix
11. M83 — Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
12. tUnE-yArDs — who kill
13. Jay-Z & Kanye West — Watch the Throne
14. The Roots — undun
15. Noah and the Whale — Last Night on Earth
Coldplay's fifth album reached #1 in over 15 countries, including the UK and the US.
16. Coldplay — Mylo Xyloto
17. SBTRKT — SBTRKT
18. Jamie Woon — Mirrorwriting
19. Fleet Foxes — Helplessness Blues
20. Elbow — Build a Rocket Boys!
21. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds — Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
22. The Weeknd — House of Balloons
Wasting Light by Foo Fighters is nominated for the 2012 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
23. Foo Fighters — Wasting Light
24. Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx — We’re New Here
25. Cults — Cults
26. Björk — Biophilia
27. Friendly Fires — Pala
28. Wild Beasts — Smother
29. The Antlers — Burst Apart
30. The Lonely Island — Turtleneck & Chain
31. Foster the People — Torches
32. Miles Kane — Colour of the Trap
Adele's second album was the best-selling of 2011, shifting more than double the copies of second-placed Christmas by Michael Bublé.
33. Adele — 21
34. Nero — Welcome Reality
35. Arctic Monkeys — Suck It and See
36. Benjamin Francis Leftwich — Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm
37. Kasabian — Velociraptor!
38. Lykke Li — Wounded Rhymes
39. Yuck — Yuck
40. Battles — Gloss Drop
4 Comments
I was surprised at a few things:
1. That Jay-Z and Kanye West got that high. I didn’t realise we had so many hip-hop fans, it’s great!
2. That Coldplay didn’t make the top ten. Pretty much everyone I know has sung the praises of that album!
3. That Noel Gallagher didn’t make the top 20. One of the strongest and best-selling albums of the year.
4. That Adele was all the way down at #33. Really?
But it is a very interesting list, for sure.
I don’t think anyone here was that impressed by the Coldplay album nor the Snow Patrol one; they both seemed distinctly average. The only top 10 surprise for me is James Blake and naturally I would have hoped Foster The People had done better, having voted it #1.
Pleased to see that Guy Garvey and the boys from Bury came in a solid 20!
I’m very surprised that Laura Marling’s “A Creature I Don’t Know” didn’t even get a look in. I thought she was pretty popular in Southampton and the album’s certainly deserving (I’m fairly sure it cracked a lot of critics’ top 20 lists). And I’m not just saying that because I’m a teensy bit in love with her, it’s genuinely an incredible album!