Music magazine NME have named their 50 Best Albums of 2011, with PJ Harvey’s eighth album Let England Shake occupying the top spot. The album has had an accolade-filled year, being named best album of 2011 by Mojo, The Guardian and the Los Angeles Times among other publications and websites; aggregator website Music Critic identifies Let England Shake as the most successful album of the year overall, way ahead of Bon Iver’s self-titled second album and Adele’s second effort 21 (neither of which appear in the NME‘s top ten).
Elsewhere in NME.com’s “2011 Reviewed” series, Lana Del Rey’s debut single ‘Video Games’ was named Best Track, American soul singer Janelle Monáe won Best Music Video for ‘Tightrope’, Gossip singer Beth Ditto beat names like Drake and Beyoncé to the top of the Best Pop Songs list with ‘I Wrote the Book’, and Best Film of the Year was attributed to Nicolas Winding Refn for cult thriller Drive.
In the readers’ polls, Best Album went to The Horrors for Skying, with PJ Harvey’s notably absent from the top 20. Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner won the reader’s Best Track poll for ‘Piledriver Waltz’, ahead of ‘Under Cover of Darkness’ by The Strokes and a second Arctic Monkeys track, ‘The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala’. ‘Video Games’ was at number 10.
The full lists can be found on the NME website here.
