Hmmm, very good question. I have bought more new (as in recently released) CDs this year than I have for a very long time. However, a top 10 would be possible but 1? Can't do it. The best I can offer is seeing John Cale coming on for an encore, viola in hand, thinking 'He's gonna do Venus In Furs' and then seeing him do said tune.
Here is doing it on a TV appearance:

For the musical equivalent of sinking ones weary bones into a nice warm bath I have a playlist of five songs by Junior Walker & The All Stars:

What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)
Gotta Hold On To This Feeling
Do You See My Love For You Growing
Take Me Girl I'm Ready
Way Back Home

It's served me well for over twenty years and I imagine it always will.

Nothing Else Matters

or does a song we discovered for the first time this year count? ;-)

The title track from Richard Hawley's Lady Bridge does it for me this year. Infact I am going to go and listen to it now. Goodnight.

Performance of the year. A pleasure and privilege to watch first hand.

Hope for us all. I love it.

Fake Empire

Thank you Richard Lowe! Somebody else who appreciates Junior Walker! What about adding 'Walk In The Night' to that list? All tracks prove there was life beyond 'Roadrunner'.

....but shall we count the ways in which 'SOS' by Rihanna is fantastic?

1) That 'Tainted Love' sample. It gives the song its propulsive, irresistable groove; gives the mum and dads something to latch on to; and there's even a sneaky reference to the original's lyrics, postmodernism fans.
2) What an amazing chorus. Precision tooled for repetition in the school playground with playful, gratuitous spelling out of 'Y-O-U'.
3) Great lyrical wordplay: "You got me stressing/Incessantly pressing the issue"
4) Was it quite warm when she was recording that video, then? It's Kylie's 'Give Me Just A Little More Time' all over again.
5) A middle eight which actually serves to ratchet up the excitement.
6) Added 'La la la la la la oh" hooks.
7) Ultra-minimalist drums: a squelch here, a handclap there.
8) She can really sing, but doesn't overdo it, 'X-Factor' entrant-style.
9) It's concise and to the point. Not histrionic and tuneless like so much contemporary R&B.
10) There isn't an unecessary interlude from a big-name rapper.

Really, I never tire of hearing this tune, even though it sits rather incongruously with the likes of Richard Swift and Vincent Vincent & The Villians in my Best Of 2007 playlist. And came out in 2006.

See what you think:

Are rediscovered epiphanies allowed? I had quite forgotton this treasure of a song until watching the fab Emmylou Harris night on BBC4 and it has made my year. It is by the great Jesse Winchester, who I saw sing it in the upstairs room of a pub in Leicester in 1986!

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Emily Jean Stock.

Took me ages to 'get' it, but wow when it clicked, blew me away and still does.

Undisco Me

Google it, you won't be sorry.

From one of the best albums of 2007

strange video though...

I can't help it, I just really rather love Art Brut and Eddie Argos, so I would like to nominate 'Nag, nag, nag'. I love the way Eddie just rants away in the foreground about everyday stuff while the band seems to play another tune entirely in the background. The album references making mix tapes, break-ups, living at home, damp clothes in washing machines ... great !

For some reason, possibly encroaching Middle Age, I found myself enjoying quite a bit of girly voiced pop. Alizee has to take the majority of the blame, but this tune also did it for me, coming early in the year as it did, and being voiced by Lowell George's daughter!

the Groove Armada/Mutya collaberation called, rather intriguingly, Song4Mutya which is by a country mile the best bit of pop i'd heard in an age...it had

a) *that* bassline
b) a two note solo not a million miles from something like what OMD would have done
c) the classic four 'empty bars' with the drums just before the chorus kicks in again
d) sass by the bucketload

So if I go back to my iTunes and check "Most Played" - Stuck Between Stations - Hold Steady. Not released this year -- but still song of the year - and band of the year??

It's a toss-up between

Cherry Ghost - Mathematics

and Joan As Police Woman with Antony Hegarty - I Defy

It's got to be FRECKLE, the opening track from Chuck Prophet's SOAP AND WATER. It's the perfect opener to a faultless album. Chuck has a way of writing love songs that are sexy and heartfelt without any "yuck" factor. This song isn't better than any of the others on the album. It just reminds me how pleasurable the next 50 minutes are going to be.

Songs that I've discovered this year that I now count among my personal favourites:

1. Most of the new Bruce Springsteen album, but let's say Radio Nowhere and Gypsy Biker for the sake of argument.

2. Silver Lining by Rilo Kiley.

3. Angel From Montgomery. Yes, Bonnie Raitt is ok, but for me it's a toss up between John Prine's two studio recordings.

4. An American Trilogy by Mickey Newbury. Sorry, Elvis.

5. She Won't by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood. From their virtually unreleased 2003 album, Nancy & Lee 3. With Duane Eddy on guitar. Just amazing: one of the best things I've ever heard (and the winner if you're pushing me to choose just one).

6. River by Joni Mitchell. I was never a fan, but this song is something else.

7. The unedited version of Chain Of Fools, from the reissue of Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul. Quite a bit longer, and featuring beautiful call and response stuff from Aretha and guitarist Joe South.

8. But You Know I Love You by The Sweet Inspirations.

9. Most of Jenny Lewis' album with The Watson Twins.

10. Empty Hearted Town, the first song on the Warren Zevon collection Preludes.

... but I think its probably Mary Chapin Carpenter's It Must Have Happened.

Clever sample, incisive lyric, pop values - should have been a single, should have been no.1

Can narrow it down any more I`m afraid. Heres my ten best songs, they`ve got me through the year very nicely, thanks.
Fake empire - The National
Intervention - Arcade Fire
Going to a town - Rufus Wainwright
Nude - Radiohead
False alarm - Cherry Ghost
Wine destroys the memory - At Swim Two Birds
Yankee Bayonet - The Decemberists
Stepping out in front of cars - Morning Bride
Tonight the streets are ours - Richard Hawley
Valerie - Amy Winehouse

My first time for 'I Want My Fleetwood Back' by Tony Joe White. Deep, rich, raw and funky. Think, Elvis could've been this good. Check out also "Crack The Rear Window Baby'. And for novelty value and still on the car theme, 'The Pontiac' by Tom Waits. Brrrm!

Could possibly have been a bit premature!! I picked up Bettye Lavettes Scene of the Crime after hearing one song on the radio and not knowing much about her. Listening to her version of 'somebody pick up my pieces' should be compulsory. The emotion really has to be heard to be believed. I for one will be checking out her back catalogue after hearing this.

Probably the song I've loved the most this year falls foul of the same thing as a lot of these choices - it isn't from this year.

I've been picking up all the old Rough Trade Counter Culture CDs, and the 2004 offering contained the funkiest, cheekiest little number I'd heard in ages - 'LA Shaker' by Cobra Killer.

For stuff actually from this year, perhaps some lovely Go! Team, such as 'Grip Like A Vice'. It's so hard not to like them, so why do people try?

Hang Me Up To Dry by The Cold War Kids

There's a new interview with Costello in this months Mojo where he says that he will probably never tour the UK again because we dont dig him and he doesn't dig us. Bit unfair methinks. Further he says that he will likely not record in a studio again because the record labels dont do their job anymore ie marketing and because MP3 has taken away the intended chronology of an artists output. Given that he is on record as giving Emmylou Harris a personally compiled IPOD as a gift thats a bit rich.Anyway it got me thinking what tracks would we take off well known albums to alter the tracklisting to make them a better product.

Les Boys off Dire Straits making movies.
God loves a drunk - Richard Thompson Rumor and sigh

Am sure there are loads more - lets hear them!!

every time I hear "The Crane Wife 1 & 2" from The Decemberists' album of the same name. Having always had a soft spot for folklore, and for songs that end in sadness, this one ticks all the folk/rock boxes to perfection.

In a year when there's been a lot of creditable pop music released - The Shins, Arcade Fire, the National, Beirut, the New Pornographers, Cherry Ghost, Chuck Prophet, to name but a few - I always get slightly disturbed to see anyone credit a song with as little originality and talent as Rianna's 'SOS' on the spurious grounds of its knowing, post-modernism. These latent R&B songsmiths (OK copyists - it's only an updated disco pastiche of 'Tainted Love' after all) just don't have that much insight or intelligence. I found this almost, but not quite, as irritating as the numerous attempts to get us to buy into the myth that Girls Aloud are actually a decent pop act. Sorry - I'm still not buying it.

Anyway, digressions apart, my choice of songs would either be "Tomorrow" by The Aliens or 'You Put A Spell On Me' by the woefully underappreciated talent that is Ed Harcourt .