The Good & The Ugly: 2014

*Sigh*… I guess I have to talk about 2014 now. I was dreading this year from the genesis of this list. I had the bare bones for the idea and I instantly remembered 2014, a sluggish, boring, maddeningly downbeat year with very little flavor. I mentioned in the last article how I blame Lorde and those feelings still ring true. With her empty jabs at materialism in music, she made minimalism the new norm, covering music in these dry blues and overcast grays. One thing we’ll find out is that not a lot of artists can pull this off because their personalities aren’t powerful enough to stand on their own. On the other side of the spectrum, there were artists clinging on to the vapidity pop music previously had and made it as obnoxious as humanly possible. Sometimes, they’d somehow STILL be boring. It’s a year with very little high points when looking at the Billboard landscape so finding some great songs was a chore.

Before I move onto the list proper, here are some honorable mentions: Bobby Shmurda-”Hot Boy”, Ed Sheeran- “Sing”, Sam Smith- “Stay With Me”, Schoolboy Q- “Studio”, Drake- “0 to 100/The Catch Up”, Coldplay- “A Sky Full of Stars”, and Bastille- “Pompeii”. Yeah, that’s it. I usually have way more but man, this was tough. First, though, I wanted to talk about the queen.