I’ve been dreading this moment pretty much from the second I hit publish on last year’s round-up of my musical adventures.

Now it’s time for me to pick not only my top five albums of the year just gone but also update my top ten albums of all time. Naturally, this only includes the ones I have listened to in the course of this album adventure nonsense, so it’s actually the top ten albums of all time out of 200 options. But that’s double last year, and the more I listen, the more I learn.

It’s worth a moment here just to remind everyone, and myself, what this album adventure is all about. Each week, myself and Mr C choose an album for me to listen to. I get to choose current stuff, so this year or the previous year. Mr C has the rest of musical history to choose from. I try and listen to each album twice, because sometimes they need a moment to grow on you.

This goes on for 50 weeks, and then I spend the remaining two weeks trying to fathom how to make a top five and top ten list. So, here goes nothing, the top ten albums of all time:

1. Come On Over, Shania Twain
2. Something to Tell You, HAIM
3. Songs in A Minor, Alicia Keys
4. Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys
5. WALLS, Kings of Leon
6. Evolve, Imagine Dragons
7. With His Blue and Hot Guitar, Johnny Cash
8. Native, OneRepublic
9. Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman
10. Camino Palmero, The Calling

It’s interesting to compare this to last year – OneRepublic and Tracy Chapman have drastically dropped down the order, whilst my love for Shania’s classic album only increased with her return to the music world. Kelsea Ballerini dropped out of the top ten altogether, despite creating another album that I love to pieces, whilst Johnny Cash stormed straight in to number seven, with the start of what could be a big obsession.

Now down to the business of 2017’s top five albums. It has been an EPIC year of music, so many fantastic albums from so many brilliant people – especially the girls, they’ve been killing it this year. Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Lorde, Shania, Miley, Kelsea, Demi, Katy Perry, Dua Lipa, the list just goes on and on. Narrowing it down was hard, although I had my top three spots picked out pretty quickly. Eventually I picked number four and then had a top five for all of a moment before switching out the final album at the very last minute.

45 of the 50 albums I selected this year were from 2017, which is up from 38 relating to 2016 last year. A lot of them I listened to the moment they came out, and others I was actively waiting for them to be released, which just shows I continue to be keen even after two years of this listening pressure.

Enough wittering, here are the top five of 2017:

1. Something to Tell You, HAIM
2. Evolve, Imagine Dragons
3. After Laughter, Paramore
4. Unapologetically, Kelsea Ballerini
5. Who Built the Moon?, Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds

Interestingly, I’ve become so hooked on music this year that I’ve introduced several Beats1 shows to my listening schedule as well, and my podcast listening has drastically fallen off a cliff. I’m all about the songs right now, and so looking forward to year three of On the record.