A few years ago, 2 Chainz rapped about his actual Instagram photos of homemade lobster omelets. He appeared in plenty of popular songs, but sparingly, like a weird uncle you love enough to introduce quickly at a holiday party before he can discuss his views on the moon landing. In 2014, popular radio playlists now feature entire songs by goofy rappers like Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan, who compare turf wars between rival gangs to spaghetti. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift is being celebrated by traditionally indie rock blogs. Strange has become mainstream, and normal is now alternative.
Playlists are becoming more diverse as they unhinge from the old modes of conveyance. Spotify now has over twenty million songs and a billion playlists, all available instantly at no cost. There are now fewer obstacles than ever between you and the songs to which you cannot stop listening.
Aside from the occasional curmudgeon who believes good music began and ended with the band Styx playing on the stereo of his 1984 Ford Tempo, people continue to share and add songs to their respective soundtracks. The search for new music continues, even if “new” just means “new to you.” These are ten songs that were new in 2014, and that I will keep playing and sharing for a long time to come.
10. Saint Pepsi – “Fiona Coyne”
photo courtesy: Fortune Sound Club
Ryan DeRobertis is 21 years old, and the internet has already thrust him into the position of “Vaporwave Ambassador.” The name is silly and meaningless. DeRobertis has made a handful of exceptional dance tracks, featuring up-tempo beats and spliced samples of classic soul. The term “Vaporwave” and Saint Pepsi may both be gone soon, anyway (despite vowing to never change his name, it looks like some lawyers may force the issue). And this is all fine. Saint Pepsi’s sound is changing.
“Fiona Coyne” begins with a brief prelude of the signature soul and non-sequitur dialogue samples he is known for, but then transitions to DeRobertis singing with his own voice. He begins with a laid-back half-talk while crisp guitars jangle about. Then the chorus hits, and his clear falsetto slides in, and pushes everything else behind him.
9. Isaiah Rashad – “Heavenly Father”
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photo courtesy: J. Ristaniemi
Isaiah Rashad is soulful. His Instagram is filled with photos of his baby son and artistic selfies. Before he started rapping, he considered becoming a preacher. This year, Rashad released his debut album, Cilvia Demo, on Kendrick Lamar’s label. The album is rich, textured, and thoughtful.
The highlight of Cilvia is “Heavenly Father.” The song finds Rashad in need of help. He describes a lifetime of depression. He talks about how he cut himself as a child. He alludes to hanging from a rope. He puts a gun in his mouth. And even with the self-awareness of knowing he is not alone in his desperation—he disregards many of his issues as “the problems of a twenty-something”—suicide still grips him as if it could suddenly come one day and take him like a storm.
Rashad’s cadence is rhythmic. It rolls in gorgeous contrast to his doubts about his health and future. His voice lightly crackles like an old record, each bar ending with a multi-tracked echo in harmony. It leaves the impression that he knows, or hopes, that someone is out there who can help him.
8. Future Islands – “Seasons (Waiting on You)”
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photo courtesy: Kmeron
A staggering number of publications have anointed “Seasons” as the best song of 2014, including Pitchfork, The Guardian, NME, and Spin. How did a synth-pop song from an aging Baltimore band without much commercial success find sudden universal acclaim?
Their Letterman appearance helped. An unknown middle-aged man in black slacks and a tight black t-shirt, dressed like a divorced pharmaceutical salesman on a first date, danced and growled and pounded his chest before a national audience, demanding viewers to understand him. Three million YouTube views and counting.
The chorus revolves around the premise that “people change, but some people never do.” Sam Herring is waiting for someone to finally soften, like a spring warming into summer. He realizes, however, that even if summer did come, “winter will crave what is gone.” Personal connections are inevitably a compromise, if they ever come at all.
Despite its fatalism, “Seasons” bursts with optimism like a slow-burning fist-pump. Herring hopes that his honesty can help people: “When you say something that means a lot to you, it can help people through their own problems,” Herring said during a KEXP interview. His awkwardness is just a sign that he is human.
7. Death Grips – “Big Dipper"
Death Grips don’t care if you like their music. They appear to not care about anything at all. While still signed by a major label, they preempted the official release of their 2012 album by leaking it for free with an extremely NSFW cover art photo of an erect penis. Their label quickly moved to drop them. This year, Death Grips broke up.
Stefan Burnett and Zach Hill have been involved in other abrasive and experimental groups, but none this volatile. They formed only four years ago, and recorded five albums, each one ever more aggressive and hyper-political.
Many of the lyrics in “Big Dipper” are nonsensical. I can’t begin to decipher “my Godzilla’s a poxy climber” or “think catwalk backwards out the fox.” But it is best not to try to directly understand Death Grips. Just try to appreciate the art of their work.
Chopped and hiccupped vocals by Björk are laced throughout the track, with a pulsing, throbbing beat. The final third of the song drops everything except Bjork’s swelling voice as it punches against fibrous electronics. The electric smashing becomes incessant like the final seconds in a close game of laser tag. It is astonishing, and then it’s all gone.
6. Hiss Golden Messenger – “Super Blue (Two Days Clean)"
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photo courtesy: Eli Duke
M.C. Taylor recorded “Super Blue (Two Days Clean)” five years ago at his kitchen table, quietly enough to not wake his newborn son. He had a full album in the can, but its release was cut short by riots and a fire in London. Many of the songs were re-recorded with a full band and remixed as country pop songs. Then, earlier this year, his old label found another master tape. Like pulling a stack of old Polaroids from a forgotten drawer, they released the original tracks.
The original songs are stripped and haunting, just Taylor and an acoustic guitar and the warm scratches of cassette tape hiss. On “Super Blue,” he tells the story of a military veteran losing control. The vet can only stay clean for two days before the night pulls him back out again to get drunk. He keeps looking to the moon, both in blame to drink and for help to stop.
Taylor is, by nature, a “little bit standoffish.” He told Interview Magazine that he never planned on the lost songs becoming an album, that they are a collection of questions from a confusing time in his life. To listen to “Super Blue” feels personal, like you are watching him record at that kitchen table from five years ago, when his family and his career were all so new.
5. I Love Makonnen featuring Drake – “Tuesday Remix"
photo courtesy: The Dope Academy
Makonnen Sheran and Drake are at different points in their careers. Drake has never been better. He raps in this song about how he just finished performing “back-to-back-to-back” concerts. No one in his entourage sells drugs anymore. They have plenty of money. He parties on a Tuesday because he can party any day he wants.
Makonnen’s schedule is less than his own. He works nights and weekends. He sells drugs whenever and wherever he can. He parties on a Tuesday largely because his parole officer is less likely to notice him sneaking out of the house during the mid-week (Makonnen spent two years under house arrest and was sentenced to five years on probation for involuntary manslaughter after a gun incident in a car).
Makonnen comes from drugs and violence—but this song is about moving forward. Makonnen’s languid voice sounds dissonant, but steady. He has another song called “I Don’t Sell Molly No More.” And on “Tuesday,” he takes a break from working to dream about a day in which he no longer does.
4. Cloud Nothings – “Pattern Walks"
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photo courtesy: Side Stage Collective
This is not the first time that Cloud Nothings have lost it. The band was known as a catchy and cute garage punk band from Cleveland until lead man, Dylan Baldi, suddenly and repeatedly shouted on record for a full minute in 2012, “I thought I would be more than this.” Two years later, they offer another tailspin with “Pattern Walks.”
“Pattern Walks” is a seven-and-a-half minute burner. It spirals from sharply stand-offish electric guitars, to prickly punk growling, to a final two minutes of exasperated echoes of distortion. “Pattern Walks” is brutal, unrelenting, and exhausting.
Cloud Nothings recorded their 2014 album, Here and Nowhere Else, while on tour. Each song was written in a different country. “Pattern Walks” finds the band at their limit, but still in control as Baldi shouts, “I’m pushing forward while I keep the past around me.” They sound like a band unafraid to shove their talents to the brink of collapse, knowing that their focus will keep them from falling off the edge.
3. FKA Twigs – “Pendulum"
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photo courtesy: Rene Passat
I saw FKA Twigs perform at an outdoor festival in the late afternoon of an August Saturday. It was entirely the wrong way to listen to FKA Twigs. Her music is meant for behind closed doors. Or as the New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones said, her “music projects an intimacy that’s distant from the stadium.”
“Pendulum” begins with a bare, metallic tapping before Tahliah Barnett’s crystal voice drops in. The song was produced by Paul Epworth, who has won a handful of Grammy awards, including 2012’s song of the year for Adele’s “Rolling In the Deep.” Epworth knows how to present a powerful voice.
Barnett’s power is in her restraint. On “Pendulum,” her verses rise and fall like swelling balloons. She is unendingly gentle, even as she offers debilitating lines like “so lonely trying to be yours.” The instrumentation remains sparse, just some drum beats with occasional twinkling guitars and synths. Barnett and Epworth create a space so intimately singular that when Barnett sings “I know no one,” it feels like she is the only person in the room.
2. Caribou – “Mars"
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photo courtesy: Turn the Koala
Dan Snaith has made music for a long time. He has released albums under the monikers Manitoba, Daphni, and Caribou; each distinct in style. He has reached a point in his career of real accomplishment: earned satisfaction. On his album, Our Love, he tries to describe what real happiness feels like. In a Stereogum interview, he explained:
"Well, I knew when I was going to put ’love’ in an album title, people were going to be like, “Oh yeah, love, like prince and a princess living happily every [sic] after.” And that’s nobody’s experience of love, or the feelings in their lives. So I wanted an album that was much more about conveying that complexity. But also for me it’s about loving and celebrating that complexity. That’s the central thing about existence for me — that everything is always complicated, and it’s about enjoying how wonderful and rich that makes everything."
“Mars” does actually sound like everything. It is tribal, electronic, hip-hop, and dance. It pairs a live flute with a rap hook. It bounces two disparate vocal samples. The song grows. It breathes. Layers float in and out and top of each other.
Snaith’s work is masterful and precise, but also sanguine. It feels like a computer and human imperfectly synced. It feels like everything happening right now, and sounds not at all like anything else.
1. Angel Olsen – “Unfucktheworld”
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photo courtesy: Drew Bandy
Angel Olsen has bounced around middle America, from St. Louis to Chicago to Asheville, and on tour across it all with the indefatigable traveler, Bonnie Prince Billy. Her Hank Williams-warble is earned when she uses it. Her whispers sound full of highway-laced nights. She is just 27, but her presence is seasoned with the American experience.
“Unfucktheworld” is immediately beautiful. The beginning guitar strums are dusty and coarse like old rope. Olsen’s voice drifts in like the first winter wind, somber and real and assured.
Olsen tries to find meaning from a past relationship, only to find affirmation in herself. When she sings again and again, “you may not be around,” it sounds like a command instead of a description. She is still here.
Olsen approaches songwriting in a detached way. Her songs are scenes from different parts of a movie, but not necessarily hers. And her songs are always changing, both in their character and perception. She has asked, “How does it stand out if it’s always the same?”
Nothing will be the same. This year had countless tensions like any other year, but they were ironic in their self-awareness. Ferguson, MO created a commission to study police procedures before the grand jury delivered a decision. Cleveland began locking down schools for fear of Ebola without any residents being diagnosed with the disease. And Sony hesitated to release a movie based on abstract foreign threats. News is now news before it is actual, verified news. Reactions are so instantaneous that time seems to move by the tweet, not the second.
In some ways, 2014 felt like a decade in how much changed from beginning to end. These songs were wonderful because they were an opportunity to drown out all of the reverberating noise, even if for only a few minutes at a time. They were a chance to just sit and listen.
