But enough of our yakkin'

To celebrate the end of hotpress.com’s very first year – and what an amazing year it’s been, thanks, in no small part, to you lot, the greatest website community on the planet – we’ve organised the great-grandmother, the Big Cahuna, the Padrino if you will of competitions.

We are giving away not one, not five, not ten, but 30 – that’s right, thirty - of the best albums of 2002. The very finest 30, as it happens. The 30 Best Albums of 2002 as selected by our music scribblers in the Hot Press Critics’ Poll, as fate would have it.

All you have to do to be in to win is to write a wee something about "your 2002".

Y’see, we reckon we’ve already said enough about what kind of year we’ve all had. So what we want to hear about is what kind of year you’ve had. Hence, we want YOUR end-of-year roundups. We’ll publish some of our favourites – and the very best one of all, will earn its writer the 30 best albums of 2002.

We’re giving you the same parameters we had – that is, you should write, as our own commissioning editor told us, "around 400 words on the highlights of 2002 - musically, personally, globally, etc." (Be sure to adhere fairly strictly to the "around 400" word count spec - we had to!) Have a look at our critics' roundups in the Hot Press Annual to get an idea of what we're looking for.

You have until Tuesday, January 7th at 5pm.

Send your end-of-year roundups to [email protected].

Get scribblin’!

…and happy Christmas & have a kickin’ new year…