10 contributors, 219 albums

By broadening our group of contributors to 10 this year, we also broadened our range of musical tastes. For this year's project, each of us shared our list of top albums -- some offered as many as 50, others as few as 10 -- and in the end, we came up with a total of 219 albums.

Despite our diverse viewpoints and stylistic preferences, we found common ground on several of the year's musical offerings but plenty of disagreement on where those commonly loved albums fall on the spectrum of overall awesomeness.

Our plan for this blog was to share our consensus picks of the top 50 albums of 2010, but because we have such a diverse viewpoint, we decided to also share our personal top five picks for the year with a bit of commentary on why those five albums are our favorites.

We will share individual picks soon. But first, let's take a look at the 169 albums that didn't quite make it into our final list. Each of these offerings is terrific in the views of at least one of our 10 contributors. Some of them even landed on individual top-5 lists, as you'll soon discover.

The also-rans: the top 51-219 albums of 2010, according to us.

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks

Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart

Warpaint - The Fool

Wavves - King of the Beach

Surfer Blood - Astro Coast

Punch Brothers - Antifogmatic

Matthew Dear - Black City

David Byrne and Fatboy Slim - Here Lies Love

Dust Poets - World at Large

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me

Various Artists - Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine

Preservation Hall Jazz Band - An Album Benefiting Preservation Hall and the Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program

Tides of Man - Dreamhouse

Local Natives - Gorilla Manor

M.I.A. - /\/\/\Y/\

Avenged Sevenfold - Nightmare

Josh Ritter - So Runs the World Away

MGMT - Congratulations

Rocky Votolato - True Devotion

The Love Language - Libraries

Steven Page - Page One

Mose Allison - The Way of the World

Curren$y - Pilot Talk

SONOIO - Blue

John Shade - All You Love Is Need

Barenaked Ladies - All In Good Time

Audra Mae - The Happiest Lamb

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis

Thunder - Live at the BBC (1990-1995)

KT Tunstall - Tiger Suit

Zoe Keating - Into the Trees

Neon Trees - Habits

My Chemical Romance - Danger Days

Ryan Bingham and Dead Horses - Junky Star

Autechre - Oversteps

Fitz and the Tantrums - Pickin' Up the Pieces

Tired Pony - The Place We Ran From

Gin Blossoms - No Chocolate Cake

Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can

Cloud Cut - Light Chasers

The Union - The Union

Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh

Jaga Jazzist - One-Armed Bandit

Slash - Slash

Harlem - Hippies

Sarah McLachlan - Laws of Illusion

James LaBrie - Static Impulse

The City Champs - The Set-Up

jj - no. 3

Brad Yoder - Excellent Trouble

Roky Erickson with Okkervil River - True Love Casts Out All Evil

The Hold Steady - Heaven is Whenever

Pete Yorn - Pete Yorn

El-P - Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3

Jenny and Johnny - I'm Having Fun Now

Nelson - Lightning Strikes Twice

First Aid Kit - The Big Black and The Blue

The Acorn - No Ghost

Darius Rucker - Charleston, SC 1966

Belle and Sebastian - Write About Love

The Secret Sisters - The Secret Sisters

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - I Learned the Hard Way

The Glitch Mob - Drink The Sea

She & Him - Volume 2

Turtle Island Quartet - Have You Ever Been..?: The Music Of Jimi Hendrix and David Balakrishnan

Atlas Sound - Bedroom Databank Volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4

The Black Angels - Phosphene Dream

MC Frontalot - Zero Day

Caribou - Swim

Zion - Atomic Clock

Zac Brown Band - You Get What You Give

Anat Cohen - Clarinetwork: Live at the Village Vanguard

Hilary Hahn - Higdin & Tchaikovsky: Violin Concertos

The Depreciation Guild - Spirit Youth

The Kissaway Trail - Sleep Mountain

Scorpions - Sting In the Tail

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse - Dark Night of the Soul

The Two Man Gentleman Band - Dos Amigos, Una Fiesta!

dum dum girls - I will be

Good Old War - Good Old War

Marching Band - Pop Cycle

Imagination Movers - In a Big Warehouse

Dave Brubeck - Legacy of a Legend

Deadmau5 - 4x4=12

Steel Train - Steel Train

Deftones - Diamond Eyes

Versus - On the Ones and Threes

Tesla - Alive in Europe

The Walkmen - Lisbon

Weakerthans and Jim Bryson - The Falcon Lake Incident

Extreme - Take Us Alive (Live Boston 2009)

Land of Talk - Cloak and Cipher

Magnetic Fields - Realism

Merle Haggard - I Am What I Am

Midlake - The Courage of Others

Pavement - Quarantine The Past

Teenage Fanclub - Shadows

Peter Wolf - Midnight Souvenirs

Stone Temple Pilots - Stone Temple Pilots

Ginger - Ten and 10 (Two)

Mimicking Birds - Mimicking Birds

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - Up From Below

Axis of Awesome - Infinity Rock Explosion!

J. Roddy Walston and the Business - J. Roddy Walston and the Business

Dr. Dog - Shame, Shame

Bruce Springsteen - The Promise

Jazmine Sullivan - Love Me Back

Freelance Whales - Weathervanes

The Damned Things - Ironiclast

Neil Young - Le Noise

Freedy Johnston - Rain on the City

Cee-Lo - Ladykiller

Reading Rainbow - Prism Eyes

Mike Patton - Mondo Cane

Owen Pallet - Heartland

Ozzy Osbourne - Scream

Los Campesinos! - Romance Is Boring

Ed Kowalczyk - Alive

Tom Petty - Mojo

Laura Stevenson & The Cans - A Record

The Morning Benders - Big Echo

Truth & Salvage Co. - Truth & Salvage Co.

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

Dungen - Skit I Allt

Pernice Brothers - Goodbye, Killer

Various Artists - Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti

We Are Scientists - Barbara

Baseball Project - Broadside Ballads

Joy Kills Sorrow - Joy Kills Sorrow

Eric Martin - Mr. Vocalist 3

Manic Street Preachers - Postcards from a Young Man

Minus the Bear - Omni

Kathryn Calder - Are You My Mother?

Airbourne - No Guts. No Glory

The Whigs - In the Dark

Brooklyn Rider - Dominant Curve

Nada Surf - If I Had a Hi-Fi

Jack Johnson - To The Sea

Angus & Julia Stone - Down the Way

Blackwood Creek - Blackwood Creek

The Vaselines - Sex With An X

Dan Mangan - Nice, Nice, Very Nice

Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks

Electric Six - Zodiac

Of Mice & Men - Of Mice & Men

Eels - End Times

Taylor Swift - Speak Now

Elvis Costello - National Ransom

Twin Shadow - Forget

Meat Loaf - Hang Cool Teddy Bear

Superchunk - Majesty Shredding

Crime In Stereo - I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone

Mates of State - Crushes

Guster - Easy Wonderful

Shelby Lynne - Tears, Lies and Alibis

Alexander Melnikov - Shostakovich

John Hiatt - The Open Road

Zac Brown Band - Pass the Jar

Aloha - Home Acres

Kingsley Flood - Dust Windows

Bad Religion - The Dissent of Man

Jason Moran - Ten

Static of the Gods - Knowledge Machine

White Wizzard - Over the Top

The Unthanks - Here's the Tender Coming

Court Yard Hounds - Court Yard Hounds

Basia Bulat - Heart of My Own

Sam Amidon - I See the Sign

The Futureheads - The Chaos