2007: number 8

Sally Shapiro
Disco Romance
The first of three Swedes to make it on this year's list, Sally Shapiro has been on my radar since late last year, when I couldn't get enough of her single "I'll Be By Your Side" and the incredibly awesome, possibly better Rude 66 808 Remix. As these two tracks bookend the European release I found myself paying little attention to the tracks in between and the album eventually fell out of rotation on my ipod. It was only a month or so ago, with the onset of cold weather, that I gave it another shot, and kind of hate myself for not doing it sooner. Shapiro and producer Johan Agebjorn have done something incredible here, updating Italo-disco beats by injecting them with the cool, slightly dark, almost icey production that to me seems so intrinsically Swedish, the same production that made The Knife's Silent Shout my favorite album of last year (though much different from what we've got here).