I’ve long been a big fan of music and for almost as long, I’ve been a big fan of “the music countdown.” Whether it’s the top songs of the week, the best songs of all time, or some random dude’s Web site, I love the anticipation, the surprises, and of course, the controversy.

After being dumbfounded at how these things sometimes turn out, I decided it would be fun to create my own list of top songs. Whether people agreed or disagreed with my choices, the list would be indisputable. It would be my list.

While I initially set out to chronicle my 100 top songs, the list kept growing and growing as I struggled with how I could omit some of my favorite tunes. And while I cut it off at 250, I could have easily kept going.

Here’s a little about my thought process in creating this list:

• Songs have become favorites for many reasons. Some I think are lyrically and/or musically brilliant. Others have special meanings because they remind me of good times and good people. If I were a cheesy person, I would call it the "soundtrack of my life.”
  
  
• Favorite artists do not always equal favorite songs. There are some bands I love as album bands or like all their songs equally. Some artists that I love are either completely omitted or poorly represented. In some cases I opted to choose artists’ more mainstream hits. This unfortunately does not represent my full appreciation of their more diverse work.
  
  
• It was hard to pick out the songs and it was even harder to put them in an order. While I paid a lot of attention to the very top of the list, the order has less and less meaning towards the end.
  
  
• I’ve said before that I hate remakes. Well I was wrong. There are quite a few songs on here that were originally performed by other artists. The list represents my favorite performances of particular songs.
  
  
• New songs. There aren’t a whole lot. Songs really need to prove themselves over time to make it. As such, this list, in theory, is always a work in progress. I may or may not update it here.
  
  
• I’m sure I overlooked some songs that definitely deserve to be on here. Whoops.
  
  
• My methodology involved going through my music collection (albums and mp3s) and coming up with a list of candidates. I then basically just used a bubble sort to come up with the order.
  
  
• Since controversy is an inevitable part of any countdown, I fully expect people to disagree with my choices. Feel free to send me comments or, just go ahead and make a list of your own. Here's what people have said.
  
  

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