Dynamic Range Radio's Top 100 Artists of 2010 (51-100)

2010 is winding down so it's time once again to look back and consider the top 100 artists played on Dynamic Range Radio over the past year, give or take a few days.

I'll start by focusing on the bottom half of the list where the biggest heatseaker was the Danish band Mew who leaped a whopping 390 points to land at #65 . Huge gains were also made by the Editors, the Great Lake Swimmers, and Monsters Of Folk, who all had recent albums in heavy rotation and all moved up by more than 200 points.

More modest gains were made by Neil Young who leaped another 43 points after making huge strides in 2009. Sitting at #52 this year he seems a sure-fire candidate to crack the top 50 in 2011.

LCD Soundsystem rode the wave of Dynammy Award nomination buzz all the way to #51, up 23 spots from last year, and could easily climb further next year as well.

The news wasn't so good for Iron & Wine who dropped 27 spots in 2010, but with a new album coming in January I'm fairly certain that trend will soon be reversed.

Some notables from outside the top 100 include Charlotte Gainsbourg who had the year's highest debut at #121. Gang Of Four climbed 177 spots to sit just outside the top 100, and another band to watch in 2011 is Shearwater. I added another song from The Golden Archipelago to heavy rotation a few weeks ago, and there's at least one more song from that brilliant album I plan to add soon, so they might make their first appearance in the top 100 next year.

When I wrote my recap last year I predicted that ... And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead were the band most likely to drop out of the top 50, and they wound up falling all the way to #101 with no signs of reversing the trend unless their next album is much better than their last one.

Two artists who fell out of the top 100 unexpectedly were Matthew Sweet and Joy Division, but they're both right on the cusp and could easily rebound next year.

For those of you who prefer raw data to analysis, here's the complete list from 51-100. When I originally typed this up I included the change in ranking from last year with fancy colored fonts to indicate whether an artist had risen or fallen, and it was all very impressive and Billboard-y, but then all that data and hard work got lost somehow and I wound up starting from scratch, so here's the simple, streamlined, not-tempting-fate version: 

51. LCD Soundsystem
52. Neil Young
53. The Smashing Pumpkins
54. Ron Sexsmith
55. The Police
56. Fleet Foxes
57. Joe Jackson
58. The Skids
59. Talking Heads
60. Prince
61. Peter Gabriel
62. Iron & Wine
63. Caribou
64. Mew
65. Pure
66. Coldplay
67. David Bowie
68. Hooverphonic
69. Gorillaz
70. ZZ Top
71. James
72. Marvin Gaye
73. The Cure
74. Stars
75. The Decemberists
76. Manic Street Preachers
77. MGMT
78. The Ramones
79. The Pretenders
80. Cornershop
81. Soundgarden
82. Black Mountain
83. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
84. Tegan And Sara
85. 54-40
86. Editors
87. The Pixies
88. Billy Bragg
89. Metric
90. Morphine
91. Ben Harper
92. Beirut
93. Against Me!
94. Great Lake Swimmers
95. Kate Bush
96. Camera Obscura
97. Monsters Of Folk
98. School Of Seven Bells
99. The Doors
100. Elvis Presley

I'll post the top 50 later in the week, so check back for that, and you've still got lots of time to vote in this year's Dynammy Awards. There are no clear winners yet so your vote might be enough to put your favourite song or artist of 2010 over the top.