4. Feed the Animals by Girl Talk
Sure, Girl Talk (ex-engineering student Greg Gillis) uses shards of hundreds of already well-known songs to make his secondhand hits. But bolstered by the most liberal interpretation of the fair use statute known to man, he's made the rare album on which every track is a party-starter. Like all DJs, Gillis has a great set of ears and a hell of a laptop, and it's a must to listen with his Wikipedia page open just to keep track of all the wild collisions, like K7 into The Carpenters into Metallica on "Like This," or Ice Cube's "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted" into Hot Chocolate's "Every 1's a Winner" on "Give Me a Beat." Gillis slips in the odd social message pairing Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike" with Ludacris' money loving "What's Your Fantasy," for instance but his most powerful statement is cribbed from David Bowie: let's dance!
Listen to TIME's top 10 albums of 2008:

How They Train: Speed Skater Apolo Ohno
Asian Carp in the Great Lakes? This Means War!
Gift Giving on Facebook Gets Real
Patti Smith and Mapplethorpe: Bohemian Rhapsody
The Boy Scouts of America Turns 100
Robert Gates in Afghanistan
10 Questions for Grammy Winner Maxwell
Google Buzz: Facebook Plus Twitter, and More
How ShelterBox Helps Haiti Earthquake Victims
Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt and the Limits of Celebrity