For the second year in a row, Mr C’s top five lists have been limited to songs rather than both music and films - and that’s partly because we spent a lot of the year watching 80s movies, and partly because he could only think of Black Panther as a stand out watch. I don’t think film-land is so bad but hey, this is his space to get listing so please find below, Mr C’s thoughts on the year in music, followed by the top five songs from the past twelve months, and finally the shortlist from which he was choosing.

This annual tradition has had its ups and downs. Initially, Mr C enjoyed the process of selecting his top five songs and films of the year gone by. Then he started agonising over the choices and gradually began to hate this time of year. But I care not! It’s a tradition and we’re doing it for 2017 just like all the years gone by. This time, to appease him and because we really weren’t inspired by cinema so much, I’ve said just songs, not films.

Anyone who has been following this site for a while will know that at the end of each year, I like to hand over the reigns to Mr C to share his top five songs and films of the previous twelve months. Last year was an absolute disgrace as he was unable to narrow down his shortlist to five and after a full month of arguing about it, we ended up with top tens instead.

As previously mentioned, Mr C was unable to narrow his shortlist of top songs down to just five. And by the time we got to talking about films we were both pretty exhausted by the whole subject. So, I let him get away with expanding his list to ten films as well! I’m such a pushover. Anyway, these are in alphabetical order with links to my Film Watch reviews for a bit more of an insight.

Now, normally at this point in the year, I hand over a portion of my site to Mr C, allowing him to pick his top five songs and top five films that we consumed in the previous twelve months. It’s a joyous process for me - throughout the year, we keep a note of potential contenders and then I get to watch him writhe in agony as he tries to finalise his top five lists.

Following swiftly on from the films of 2014, Mr C turns his attention to music. The playlist to choose from was up to 17 songs at one point, and narrowing it down to five proved to be a difficult task, but one which was great fun for me to watch him agonise over. You can view previous years via the handy links at the end of the post, but for now, let’s see what the end result of the hours of weighing up country against girl groups against guitar bands were.

It’s that time of year again (a little late actually), the one where I force Mr C to decide on his top five songs and films from the year just gone. Usually, this is a fun process in which we discuss music and movies and have a bit of a laugh. This year, it’s been less enjoyable because there have been so many good songs and films that it’s been a bit of a wrench to cut the list down to just five.

Just as with the top five songs of the year, Mr C also likes to pass judgement on the movies we have watched over the past twelve months as well. This is a slightly more tricky selection to explain, as we live constantly about four months behind cinema release dates due to the rental window. So, it’s not quite “top five films released in 2013” and it’s not really “top five films watched in 2013” either, it’s more “top five films that were released between August 2012 and August 2013 that we watched in 2013.

This is the time of year where I hand over the keys of my blog to Mr C, or at least give him a paragraph or two of space, to share the things he’s been loving this year. There are two categories - films and music - and we’ll be starting with the latter. Here’s Mr C’s top five songs from 2013, and I will tell you now, it’s been a heartwrenching process to whittle these down to just five.

Mr C’s back for his second roundup of the 2012 year. Last week it was all about music, this week it’s all about the visual arts. To recap the rules, initially we wanted this to be a “top five 2012 films seen in 2012” but the problem is we run about six months behind thanks to windowing and all that nonsense. Instead, the rules are relaxed a little to include the 2011 films that we didn’t catch in time last year, plus the 2012 films we have managed to see so far.