ND Year-End Readers’ Poll: What Are Your Ten Favorite Albums of 2013?

With the end of the year upon us now in a matter of weeks, the time has come to cast your vote for the best albums of 2013. 

Each year, we turn the spotlight to you folks, to come up with a Top 50 list of the No Depression Community’s favorite releases. While most folks in this community are likely to focus on Americana/roots music, in the past we’ve received and counted votes for artists as varied as Lady Gaga, Patti Smith, and Adele. If you’re interested in pitching in for this year’s Top 50, be honest and share the ten albums (in numbered order, please) which most blew your mind.

In the interest of my sanity (your fearless Community Manager Kim), we will not accept Top 20 (or longer) lists, but feel free to add honorable mentions in addition to your top 10, if only for the sake of conversation. Just know those honorable mentions will not be counted toward the final tally. Also, please keep your votes to albums released during the calendar year of 2013. Reissues don’t count, nor do box sets. If you’re in Europe and inclined to include an album which was released in your part of the world in 2013, but which hasn’t yet dropped in the States (or did way back in 2012), you’re welcome to include it because it’s current to you. Ballott stuffing is seriously discouraged (i.e. if you’re only voting because an artist publicized that you should vote for them), and we reserve the right to adjust for that as necessary. The final list will be comprised of albums which have received the most votes. See details on how the votes will be tallied below.

To contribute to our final tally, please post your list in the comments on this post. You’re welcome to blog about your favorite albums of the year, but if you don’t also include your list in the comments here, it will not be counted. To comment on this post, scroll to the bottom of this page and leave your list in the comments section.

You have until 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Mon., Dec. 16 to submit your top ten list via this blog post. I and a small team of volunteers will then convene in an underground bunker somewhere in the desert, where we will employ a complicated mathematical formula to combine all your lists into one master list.

This master list will be published on this site on Thursday Dec. 26, 2013 as the final official No Depression Community Poll. Also published that day will be a masterlist of the favorites from our most frequently featured bloggers – the closest we’ll get on this site to your standard critics’ poll.

Votes cast in this ND Readers’ Poll will be tallied as such: Ranked lists will be scored using “reverse 10” scoring: 10 points for #1; 9 points for #2, 8 points for #3, etc down to 1 point for #10. Unranked lists get 5.5 points per choice (10+9+8…+2+1=55 total points, divided by 10 choices equals 5.5 points per choice). Non-numbered lists will be counted as ranked lists unless otherwise noted, so if you don’t number your list and want each of your choices to count as 5.5 points per album please specify that.

Now, give it some thought and cast your votes.