For our 8th annual Highlighting feature, we split the year into TWO pieces -- January to June and July to December.

Please keep in mind that, since we have no magical all-seeing, all-knowing "crystal ball," our predictions for "First-Half" 2014 could include albums that get pushed into the latter part of this year (for which we won't count again), or even into 2015. The same goes for not listing certain new albums because they weren't announced until after we made our list...