For most of The Aughts I com­piled my favorite songs onto CDs and gave them to a few friends as Christ­mas presents. My tastes skew sharply toward acoustic folk music so there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of any­thing that I like. A few of my peo­ple love it too, though, and they tend to be less dili­gent (obses­sive) about find­ing the new stuff than I am. That’s where I come in. I claim no author­ity. These are just the songs that opened my eyes the widest from 2000–2009. Because I’d never stop if I didn’t impose some kind of limit, I have picked songs that fit on one CD (plus some hon­or­able mentions). […]