Never in the history of my personal charts has two groups so dominated the charts in a calendar year. Eight of my top ten songs of the year are by two artists: Simple Plan and McFly. While Danny, Tom, Dougie and Harry have topped the artists of the year for the past three years, this year they settle for number two behind Canada's Simple Plan. However, they do manage the number one song of the year, something they haven't done before. "Lies" spent six weeks at number one late in the year and manage to squeeze in front of four Simple Plan songs which finish #2 - #5.
Simple Plan's third eponymous album released this year is a collection of terrific songs that were consistently on my playlist this year. Beginning in April, they consistently had three songs on my weekly Top 40 and two songs in the top ten. They had five number ones spending a total of fifteen weeks at the top this year and three number twos. Interestingly when I first heard McFly in 2004 I described them as a cross between Simple Plan and the Beach Boys.
Simple Plan is Pierre Bouvier, David Desrosiers, Sebastian Lefebvre, Chuck Comeau and Jeff Stinco. With this latest CD they have matured considerably from the skater punk of "No Pads No Helmet ... No Balls". They admit to challenging themselves on this release and the result is an exciting collection of hook-laden dynamic energy.
Top 15 CDs of 2008
1 Simple Plan - Simple Plan
2 Radioactive - McFly
3 Unbreakable - Backstreet Boys
4 All The Greatest Hits - McFly
5 The Promise - Il Divo
6 Shine Through The Stars - Chasen
7 Portable Sounds - Toby Mac
8 Lucky Old Man - Kenny Chesney
9 Hello Love - Chris Tomlin
10 Long Road Out Of Eden - Eagles
11 Poison Kiss - The Last Goodnight
12 Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates - Kenny Chesney
13 Dreaming Out Loud - OneRepublic
14 Viva La Vida - Coldplay
15 Audio Day Dream - Blake Lewis
American Idol contestants continue to do well on my chart; three of the top ten artists of the year were my favortites of the past three years: Chris Daughtry, Blake Lewis (last year's runner-up) and this year's runner-up, David Archuleta. Archie makes the top of this year's top new artists with a string of show performances with Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Think Of Me" coming in at #6. It was the best performing song of the year that wasn't by Simple Plan or McFly.
