Editor's letter

How was it for you? From this perspective, 2004 wasn't a vintage year for music, but there was no shortage of candidates when OMM's critics came to picking our favourite records and gigs of the year.

Certainly, albums from artists as different from each other as Dizzee Rascal and Lhasa, or Girls Aloud and Loretta Lynn, showed that we live in blessed times: I'm not sure that the range of exhilarating music on offer to us has ever been this wide. But there was little sense of any acts, or group of acts, collectively seizing 2004 by the scruff of its neck - as the brilliant Garry Mulholland points out in this issue in our definitive review of 2004.

Of course, if popular music has become more baffling, well, then that's what OMM is here for - to guide you through the confusion.

Personal highlights? The first time I heard the Streets' album (on the bus going home one night), Youssou N'Dour at the Barbican ... oh, and the world premiere of Brian Wilson's 'Smile' at the Festival Hall, and Tom Waits at the Hammersmith Apollo. I could go on, even without mentioning drunkenly putting the splendiferous Scissor Sisters on the road to success (more of that later).

Never mind the showing off. The point is: even when you're feeling like a bit of a Scrooge or party pooper, there will always be reasons to celebrate.