We’re the last to post. We’re also the only ones to wait until the end of the year. Not that December had some incredible releases that made it, but it feels proper to post year-end lists at a year’s end. This week, then, becomes the long-awaited moment where we will tell you about our favorite albums, debuts, discoveries and weigh in with some opinions on the year that was.

The overwhelming take on 2010 is that it was God’s gift to music. I remember thinking the same about 2007 — when an absolute torrent of brilliance titled In Rainbows pushed would-be No. 1 contenders like Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, Tegan & Sara’s The Con, Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, White Stripes’ Icky Thump and others out of the way. Yet that was a year for powerhouse releases, with the arguments that come at year’s end reserved for how to order a list. 2010: What even belongs on the list?

A loaded year makes a year-end Top 10 difficult to piece together. My personal favorite didn’t even make the list, and several other staff writers felt the same disappointment. Still, our Top 10 ends up as a diverse display of the intimate and intense, together revealing just how beautiful music can be in this digital age.

10. LCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening (DFA)
James Murphy is an odd bird: a portly, graying businessman more hip to production offices than dance clubs. But he’s also a DJ of the highest caliber, master of a market that glorifies lifestyles a couple decades younger and a couple tax brackets poorer. That’s the fascinating element of This is Happening, his final and finest album. He’s looking at a scene from the outside, skewering the kids who play his music with razor sharp barbs. The music is a hyper-kinetic rush, expertly wielded and meticulously executed, giving electro-dance-pop it’s first real masterpiece since Daft Punk’s Discovery. But This is Happening is better than Discovery. [Tyler Huckabee]

9. The Roots, How I Got Over (Def Jam)
The Roots’ ninth studio album How I Got Over is a brilliant example of how rap and hip-hop can transcend the musically thin and lyrically weak party music that pollutes the radio waves. Boasting an impressive list of featured artists, including Joanna Newsom and John Legend, the album utilizes the eclectic instrumentation and laid-back jazzy drumbeats so characteristic of The Roots. With subjects that range from war and self-abuse to a conversation with God, The Roots have created a masterpiece of contemplative spoken word poetry layered over soulful melodies that leaves listeners at once unnerved and uplifted. [Olivia Snider]

8. Owen Pallett, Heartland (Domino)
2010 was the year that Owen Pallett dropped his alias, Final Fantasy, embraced his voice, and produced an eccentric yet accessible album that unfolds like an orchid in bloom. Heartland is an odd concept album full of struggles, melodies, postmodernism, and Pallett’s expert violin playing. Lyrically, it takes months to uncover all the elements of the story like where the Heartland in the title is, and why there seem to be multiple personalities all struggling to take over the role of the singer. Maybe it’s Pallett addressing identity crises or maybe he’s just out to show music can still be intelligent and listenable. Either way Heartland comes in like a midnight visitor and doesn’t leave. [Scott Elingburg]

7. Deerhunter, Halcyon Digest (4AD)
Halcyon Digest confirmed what many detractors feared and what many fans already knew (or at least hoped): Deerhunter are the real deal. Filled with songs concerning a male Russian prostitute, distorted memories, and even the death of Jay Reatard, the album sees the band at their most seamless, inventive, and chill as ever. But just because Halcyon was a relatively chill album didn’t mean it was less chilling in content and mood than previous efforts Cryptograms and Microcastle. This time around, the soundstage is dominated by diverse arrangements (sax, banjo, etc.), murky Everly Brothers references, and an Atlas Sound of octave-chiming guitar arpeggios (à la Donkey Kong Country’s underwater levels). Still, my favorite surprise is guitarist/singer Lockett Pundt’s show-stealing tunes “Fountain Stairs” and “Desire Lines.” So, while Halcyon proved Deerhunter as the real deal, it also proves they’re not just Cox and crew. They’re a real band. [Derek Barber]

6. Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz (Asthmatic Kitty)
There were few Dylan fans that didn’t have something to say about his going electric, but nobody can deny that it changed the way his music was made and heard. The willingness to stretch the boundaries of a form is the mark of a true artist. With The Age of Adz, Sufjan Stevens establishes himself as such an artist (though many can argue he already had with releases like Illinoise and The BQE). He utilizes a full palate that ranges from quirky electronic to lush orchestration. It’s a departure of sorts, but in a lot of ways the album represents the best of what he has learned in the course of his career and takes it up a notch in its breadth alone. The Age of Adz is at once challenging and accessible, beautiful and jarring. The lyrics reveal introspection and maturity and many of the songs make you want to push the repeat button. Even the sprawling final song, harshed by a market used to easily digestible pop nuggets, deserves recognition for being a great (albeit rambling) track. To me, a top 10 list should be populated by albums that have shown the mark of true artistry, and The Age of Adz is definitely one of them. [Mark Mansfield]

5. The National, High Violet (4AD)
High Violet is comprised of the most musically orchestrated songs of The National’s career. Each track is its own symphony building in movement and momentum with layers of atmospheric melody. Topping it off is Matt Berninger’s wounded baritone filling the choruses with some the most disturbingly gorgeous lyrics heard all year. Whether it was asking “Cover me in rag and bones” or stating “I never thought about love when I thought about home” or “I was afraid I’d eat your brains,” the words of High Violet echoed from the primal instinct in modern everyday survival. With this album The National gave us a dark beautiful twisted reality. [William Trinity]

4. Mavis Staples, You Are Not Alone (Anti-)
In these tough, cynical times, the godmother of gospel, Mavis Staples, and her album You Are Not Alone (produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy) became just what we needed this year. From traditional spirituals to songs written by her late father “Pops” Staples and tunes penned by Tweedy specifically for the occasion, the album is always heavenly, never preachy, and genre-bends to pop, rock, and blues territory (watch for a John Fogerty cover). And she can still put on a live show; I caught her at this past September’s Life is Good Festival near Boston and she was magnetic. In 2010, Mavis showed us why she’s a Staple. [Andrew Palmacci]

3. Beach House, Teen Dream (Sub Pop)
The gauntlet was thrown early in 2010 by Baltimore’s favorite dream pop duo, Beach House. Victoria LeGrand and Alexander Scally have mesmerized audiences-in-the-know over two previous albums (2006′s self-titled and 2008′s Devotion), but it’s here, on Teen Dream, that the hazy, haunting delivery truly takes root. Beach House has always lingered overhead in some ethereal musical spirituality, but Teen Dream grounds that allure in rhythm and texture that only maturity can bring. “Norway” and “Walk in the Park” serve as the ideal displays, but the whole composition is worth hearing. Perhaps the most beautiful music realized in 2010. [Matt Conner]

2. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Roc-A-Fella
Given the amount of shit Kanye West rightly ate for hijacking Taylor Swift’s moment at the VMAs, you could have and should have seen the colossal My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy coming. The predictably unpredictable emcee/producer has made a cumbersome blockbuster dedicated to self-reflection, self-flagellation, and self-aggrandizement, as though the sensibilities of James Cameron and Woody Allen were merged into one unwieldy personality. Mark my words; all of the love this album has generated will go to his overfull head yet again. Kanye will do some very public and very stupid shit within the year, and we’ll have an even better album in a couple of years. So for those of you that can’t stand him, take note of what happens when he feels persecuted; he improves, and the most genuinely damaging thing you can do to Yeezy is look away for good. The trouble with that is that he’s always going to make incontrovertible powerhouses like “Power,” monolithic monsters like “Monster” and beautiful, dark, twisted fantasies like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and he’ll do it just to spite you. [Daniel Kirschenbaum]

1. Robyn, Body Talk (Konichiwa)
She calls it the Body Talk LP — not to be confused with the two mini-albums she cut earlier in the year — and that title says everything. The “LP” distinction is at once a winking and a straight-faced reference to Robyn’s inversion of the album format in 2010, while Body Talk rightly tags this as pop music made for the head and the hips — communicating heady things through physicality, its substance and its sheer gyrating force impossible to pull apart. The chilly robot beats can’t hide the humanity on display; Robyn sings from a broken heart, but holds the entire dancefloor in the palm of her hand. [Josh Hurst]