[PLEASE NOTE: This post will remain on top of the page until the poll ends in January. New posts will appear underneath. Thanks for scrolling.]

It is time for my favorite post of the year. This one. And no, not just because half of it is copied over from last year with the rules and such — because I frickin’ love the year-end poll.

This has absolutely become my metric for what people have dug each year, and especially in the results post with all the lists, I still find stuff a decade later that people were hip to that I’m just discovering. As a resource, it’s priceless.

Thanks if you participate this year by adding a list of 20 of your favorite releases. Any social media sharing is deeply appreciated as well. The Obelisk’s Facebook page got suspended (again, for nothing), so I need all the help I can get spreading the word.

The form is here, and the rules are copied over from last year below that:

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Thanks for reading and taking part. Please share the link if you can.

The rules don’t change, except in what year it is: Anything from Jan. 2025 to whatever’s coming out between now and Dec. 31 is eligible. If something is out digitally now and physical later and you want to include it, do. Two lists are tabulated; one of the raw votes, and one in which a 1-4 ranking is worth five points, 5-8 worth four, 9-12 worth three, 13-16 worth two and 17-20 worth one.

I’m not saying it’s a throwaway, but don’t overthink it. Somebody other than me is laughing at that, I know. I keep notes all year of my top releases, and I still struggle sometimes to put a list together. Do your best, pick what feels right, and please have fun.

As always, my most heartfelt thanks to Slevin, without whom this site wouldn’t exist. Slevin puts together the poll every year, tabulates the results, and does so with the sweetest ‘you’re my friend so I don’t charge you for this and I probably should’ indulgence possible. His pick of the year seems to have been Butthole Surfers’ Electriclarryland. Fair enough.

Poll runs until Dec. 31, 2025. Barring disaster or if I decide to let it go a couple extra days, results will be out Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, along with individual lists.

Have fun, and thanks again!

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