1. The Soundtrack of our Lives - Behind The Music
2. Beck - Sea Change
3. Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
4. Ryan Adams - Demolition
5. The Promise Ring - Wood Water
6. Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head
7. And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead..
8. Tanya Donnelly - Beauty Sleep
9. The Vines - Highy Evolved
10. Gomez - In Our Gun
11. Doves - The Last Broadcast
12. Steve Earle - Jerusalem
13. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
14. Eminem - The Eminem Show
15. The Anniversary - Your Magesty
16. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me
17. Audioslave - Audioslave
18. Get Up Kids - On a Wire
19. Pearl Jam - Riot Act
20. George Harrison - Brainwashed
21. Starsailor - Love is Here
22. Eels - Souljakcer
23. Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf
24. Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
25. Ash - Free All Angels

2002 will be remembered for a lot of things—hopefully one of them will be that it was a terrific year in music. The world re-discovered the simple pleasures of raw Rock and Roll (The Strokes, The White Stripes—see last years best of list) and took a few steps further away from Rap-mania. The "slushmetal-meets-Pearl Jam" bands (Creed, Nickelback, Puddle of Mud et. al.) dominated the airwaves (which isn't such a bad thing when you consider the Boy-Band Teen-Diva alternative.)

Earlier this year saw 3 seminal EMO bands (The Promise Ring, Get Up Kids and The Anniversary) step out of the mold and deliver albums that defied categorization and dazzled with a maturity and range that set the tone for the year to come.

The most rewarding thing was to see the acts that we've been championing for the past several years finding their way onto most major critics best-of lists—way to go Coldplay, Flaming Lips, Wilco, Gomez, Doves. And props must go to Eminem, whom, amid all the hype, managed to deliver another terrific record.

My pick for the year's best is Sweden's The Soundtrack of Our Lives. Their album Behind The Music was the record that stood out the brightest. Beck, Flaming Lips and Coldplay gave us brilliant new records, but they were a tad dreary and because it has a little more zip, Soundtrack pulled slightly ahead of the field.

On a final note, Rock and Roll lost one of it's classiest and most beloved elder statesman—George Harrison. His posthumously released Brainwashed proved that he could still get it done and reminded us of what a singular guitar voice he was. All Things Must Pass and so must a year that brought us classic albums such as these: