Music to track down

Based on the Times' music critics list of what they liked best in 2007....

Ben Ratliff's jazz-inflected best of music, 2. GILBERTO GIL: ‘GIL LUMINOSO’ (DRG). This is the album I have listened to most: a master Brazilian singer-songwriter, alone with guitar, sanding down old and new songs to the core. Few records are as beautiful.

9. ALICIA KEYS: ‘AS I AM’ (J Records). This is new R&B as new R&B, with no deeper guiding philosophy. But these cagey, obsessive songs on the good old themes of innocence and experience can grow on you wickedly, and some of the grooves, whether electronic or live band, are deep enough to roast a pig in.

Kelefa Senneh's list: 1. FEIST: ‘THE REMINDER’ (Cherry Tree/Interscope). Her modest, beguiling CD is full of carefully composed songs that sound like happy accidents. And even after a ubiquitous iPod commercial, that famous first line — “1-2-3-4 tell me that you love me more” — still sounds inviting. In a year with shockingly few big albums, Feist made the best small one.

10. NINA NASTASIA AND JIM WHITE: ‘YOU FOLLOW ME’ (Fat Cat). The American Ms. Nastasia writes songs about love, doubt and fear and sings them with acoustic guitar; the Australian Mr. White plays drums in sketchy, painterly phrases. It’s a concise, mysterious record.

6. TRACEY THORN: ‘OUT OF THE WOODS’ (Astralwerks). The year’s most pleasant surprise: After a five-year absence the singer from Everything but the Girl returned with a beautiful solo album that expands the boundaries of grown-up pop. Gleaming dance tracks, glimmering ballads: How did this CD stay a secret?

7. JENS LEKMAN: ‘NIGHT FALLS OVER KORTEDALA’ (Secretly Canadian). This mild-mannered Swedish indie-rocker is also a shameless flirt, an alternate-universe disco star, a witty raconteur and a first-rate crooner. Never underestimate the power of pure ambivalence: “Sometimes I almost regret it, like I regret my regrets/I see myself on my deathbed saying, ‘I wish I would have loved less.’ ”

10. THE-DREAM: ‘LOVE/HATE’ (Island Def Jam). In which Terius Nash, the songwriter behind Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and J. Holiday’s “Bed” recommits himself to gooey, robotic ’80s-influenced R&B. He calls himself The-Dream, and his debut album captured the ecstatic sound of pop radio in 2007.