The best albums and songs of 2011, as voted by readers

Matt finish ... Matt Cardle, winner of the X Factor 2010, has won our readers' vote for best song and album of 2011. Photograph: C Brandon/Redferns

The internet is a wonderful thing. It can give a voice to the voiceless, and allow people to gather together in order to further causes that might be overlooked by the mainstream media.

Music fans may remember the 1999 Brit awards, in which it was assumed that Steps were a sure-fire bet to win in the public-voted Best Newcomer category. However, a grass-roots campaign saw the prize instead go to Belle and Sebastian, a rare David-and-Goliath moment that showed that sometimes the underdog really can triumph.

It is with this same air of jubilation that we must name Matt Cardle, winner of series seven of the X Factor, as our readers' favourite act of the year, scooping the number one position for both album, with Letters, and single, with Starlight.

Preliminary investigations suggest that the Cardle campaign was largely down to posters on the Matt Cardle Appreciation Thread (Part 42) running on the website Digital Spy. So well done guys. Great stuff. Great.

Looking at the album and the song in second place, our non-Cardle-loving readers' votes were very much in accordance with our critics' nominations, perhaps slightly surprisingly in light of some of the outrage posted under the lists last week. We might, if we were being a bit peevish about block voting, think of Let England Shake by PJ Harvey, and Video Games by Lana Del Rey as the moral victors in our readers' polls.

Honourable mentions go to the Horrors, M83 and Adele, who had a very high number of votes in the best song category, and Bon Iver and Wild Beasts, who had a very strong voter turnout for best album.

Click on the titles below to see the Guardian's dedicated page for each of the top 20 albums where you can write your own reviews, and (most of) the top 20 songs are on this Spotify playlist.