To start the new year here is my list of the ten best French language albums of 2009.

Broadly speaking we have one hip hop, two rock, three ska, one reggae and three humorous, which are predominantly rock-based.

There were several albums that I was expecting to put on this list but discovered were in fact late 2008 releases. It all goes by far too quickly for me.

In the next post I’ll highlight some of the releases that we can look forward to over the next year. While 2009 has been a great year for ska, there is promise from bands such as Vulgaires Machins that we’ll have some top quality rock to get our ears around in 2010.

Like all their albums, this release contains some of the worst singing you are ever likely to hear outside of the X Factor but sometimes the inanity of a record such as Dans Mon Corps is exactly what the moment calls for.

Dan Mon Corps came out in October and sees the band from Quebec in just as ridiculous and joyful form as ever. The track Croquer des cous is one of my favourites but gives the game away that these guys, despite their attempts to pretend otherwise, are in fact pretty talented punk/rock songwriters and musicians.

I would have liked to have included Diam’s S.O.S. here but her incessant talking, worse, her incessant whispering between tracks drives me bonkers.

I also considered Diam’s close friend Sinik’s album Ballon D’or in its place. I had wanted to translate the song 4-4-2 from Ballon D’or shortly after the world cup draw a few days after the release of the album at the end of November.

L’ecrasement De Tête is more intersting and enjoyable than either Diam’s or Sinik’s latest releases which I why I have chosen it here.

Their music is also fairly humorous and lighthearted but less shameless than either that of Les Singes Savants or their Canadian counterparts, Les Trois Accords, despite having represented France in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007.

There are clearly strong influences from bands such as The Libertines and Arctic Monkeys (Black and Blue is almost obscenely Monkeyesque) and when you start listening to the key riff in Bouche B you will be forgiven for thinking you are listening to Queens of the Stone Age. At one point there is even a blatant, though probably unintentional, Pulp riff.

Although there are 15 tracks, over half of them are under three minutes and none of them are over four minutes. I listened to this album for the first time on my iPod while on the treadmill and it did a fine job of keeping me running. It’s rare that I outrun an album and have to “rewind”, but that’s what happened.

La Belle Étoile was their first release for five years and was a quite a different offering from the previous albums. This album would make my top ten albums of the decade. In any language.

Those that know me know that I recently turned thirty. Those that know me slightly better know that I even more recently turned thirty-six.

Although I’m well aware that I am fighting a losing battle, I do spend a lot of time in the gym and the only reason I am able to do so is that I have great music to listen to while I am pounding away on the treadmill.

My French Gym playlist currently contains around thirty tracks. From this selection here are the top ten songs that are so good that they can often cause me to ramp up the speed on that evil rubber mat that moves under my feet.

I compiled the list before checking which ones would be available for an Amazon widget. Turns out they all were except Pensées malsaines which is fair enough – La Ruda already have a song in the top ten.

As a result I am sat here in the bar and thought I would make a quick post of my top five French language albums. The problem is, as I have just discovered, five isn’t enough – I need at least fifteen to cover the variety of music necessary to feel happy with the list. So instead, I have flicked through my collection and selected ten albums that I would take right here, right now if I were heading off on an epic seven hour car journey (I live in England so seven hours is indeed epic, although I realise that many Americans will gladly drive seven hours for a taco (whatever the hell that is)).

So here they are, no in-depth analysis, not even ordered in terms of preference, just what I’d take with me in the car to keep me sane on my way to wherever I was going – just one album from each artist to try to add a bit of variety.

I’ve hammered my way through this post so it is quite raw and I haven’t had time to include MP3 clip widgets for each album but I will do so over the next day or two (where possible of course, Amazon doesn’t have everything unfortunately).

I’m still upset that there’s a couple of albums I’d be leaving behind…