TOP 100 TRACKS OF 2014
So once again the time has come for me to list my Top 100 Tracks of the previous year, albeit slightly later than usual, but hopefully better late than never. I had a really shitty and surreal start to my 2015. My dad passed away from a surprise heart attack around the same time I was planning to start the endeavor of writing up this list. Needless to say it’s been an emotionally turbulent and introspective past few weeks, not to mention incredibly busy and confusing. However, I’ve finally been able to find enough time to start this project, plus writing is therapeutic, and it’s a nice distraction in the midst of all of this.
Anyway, 2014 was a real interesting year for music. It was a slow year as far as “major” releases go, but the relative lack of fanfare allowed other virtually unknown artists make a name for themselves, while also allowing lesser-known artists further establish any previous buzz they might have garnered. It was a year of amalgamation in the midst of apparent contradictions. Where the mere concept of the “future” played a heavy role in every genre, yet music still managed to hold on firmly to its recent love affair with the vintage sounds of the past. The groovy synth sedation of Chillwave merged with the driving minimalism of UK Garage and UK Dubstep. The Lo-fi distortion and reverb-laden vibes of Glo-fi infiltrated the usually crisp atmospheres of the Trap, House and R&B scenes. And in the midst of it all was Hip-Hop, jumping back and forth, constantly morphing like it always has. With the Internet functioning as the great ambassador of our time, music is becoming more amorphous than ever before, which is both exciting and infuriating stuff. So, without further adieu here is my humble estimation of the Top 100 Tracks of 2014.
TRACKS 100 - 91
100. Brett – “Lovers (Gangplans Zouma Beach Remix)”
For the record, I hate the name Brett. It’s a terrible, ugly, obnoxious name, and more often than not, Brett turns out to be a major douche bag. I’m sure if someone gathered empirical evidence on names and their corresponding personalities, science would support my claim. But it turns out your parents were in fact right, and you can’t always judge a band by its shitty name, because Brett in band form isn’t half bad.
However, they still can’t escape the fact that their name is Brett, which automatically relegates them to last place on this list. Like really, who creates a good band and then decides to call themselves Brett? Leave it to a Brett to mess things up like that. Anyways, Gangplans’ remix takes this song to the next level of chillness. It’s like driving through future Honolulu in a hover car, immersed in the serenity of the sunshine, not a care in the world, overcome by pure unadulterated bliss. It’s a dangerously smooth jam, and since the 80’s lied about the future, and we don’t have hover cars, bump it during your next tedious commute in your woefully primitive, 4-wheeled, dinosaur burning, metal deathtrap, it’ll make the monotony at least mildly entertaining. Anyway, I’m sorry if you’re reading this and your name is Brett, but lets be honest, you probably deserve it.
99. Future – “I Won (Feat. Kanye West)”
To be honest this song should be number 100 on this list, but I refused to start off my list with it and risk automatically losing any sort of credibility or respect I might have. So let me explain. This song is not spectacular by any stretch of the imagination, heck its not even “good” really (“so… why is it on this list?” You might be asking). It made it on this list because it possesses some sort of mystical draw. It’s a song that lodges itself in your mind, hiding in the subconscious, poking its head around the corner when you least expect it, until you find yourself mentally singing “A trophy…” in a heavily auto-tuned and lilting Caribbean-infused accent, only to follow it up with a dose of Yeezy’s abrupt “youda youda youda…”. In other words, it brainwashes you. Its like you’re mind is Luke in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and you can’t shake it, its there, and good luck escaping its unexplainable allure.
This is what happened to me. The day the video was released I saw that Kanye was on a new song, and me with my natural curiosity and unnatural love for Kanye thought “hey, I should check this out”, so I checked it out. It was in my head for a day or two, then 6 months passed as it lay dormant, seemingly forgotten, and then entirely unprovoked, I shit you not, one day that auto-tuned voice pops into the hallowed halls of my mind. It had never left. It was just biding its time in there. I couldn’t help but think that the gods were sending me a sign, and telling me that I needed to put it on this list, if for nothing more than being the song that has haunted me the most throughout 2014. After all, isn’t that what good Pop music is supposed to do, latch onto your mind and suffocate it in all their embarrassingly simple, yet catchy glory? So here it is, complete with misogynistic undertones and a half-assed lovesick Kanye verse. Please don’t hate me for this one, I promise you that the list can only get better from here.
98. Duplodeck – “Saint-Tropez”
I don’t know a lot about Duplodeck, pretty much because almost everything written about them is in Portuguese, which makes sense, because they sing in Portuguese too. However, from what I have gathered, the Brazilian band recorded a whole lot of stuff in the early 2000’s, but never released any of it, until of course this past year when the rest of the world was finally blessed by their music. As you may have guessed by now, I don’t understand Portuguese, but just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate it, I mean, after all, I appreciate women. Ehhh Ohhh! Sorry, I had to get at least one dad joke in this list, its good practice for my later life. I actually think its safe to say that I understand women a whole lot better than I understand Portuguese (I hope).
Anyway, this song is like a one-stop pocket full of sunshine, complete with white sand, salt water and rum. It’s like transporting to a tropical climate via sound waves, with the mystique of the foreign tongue only adding to its allure. I’ve always wanted to visit Brazil, and this song only further cements that notion. It’s a carefree and infectious jam that can singlehandedly produce good vibes, so don’t hesitate to let that warm happiness sink into your bones while it takes you away to a tropical paradise.
97. Liam Back – “Pragmatism”
2014 was the year of Chill-Step, Future Soul, Deepwave and every other pretentious micro-genre in between. Like any discipline, there are two approaches, embrace post-modernism and our inability to ever properly understand and define anything, or overly quantify everything with pretty and confusing little names that in the end rob art of all its beauty. The blogosphere tends to enjoy doing the latter when it comes to music, and I get it, I really do, even if I don’t like it. Nowadays every schmuck thinks they can make and critique music (myself included), which over saturates everything, and leads to people desperately striving to carve out their own niches, and one of the easiest ways to do that is through making pretentious genre names.
Liam Back however thinks its all bullshit, and I’m inclined to agree. As his bio on Soundcloud so eloquently puts it “₣ṲϾK GЄИЯЄS I M∆KЄ MØØƉS”, and he’s not lying, the man makes moods. Broodingly dark jams that swirl and skip around like the confused and cloudy storms of subdued mental turmoil in all of us. It’s a view into the muffled mind of the average human, a landscape that’s constantly in flux, with effervescent light continuously trying to break through the underlying layers of darkness. It’s a full on sonic display of human emotion. The torrential inundation of chopped and reverb-laden vocals, mixed with heavy synths, and plodding and skipping percussion creates an environment of soft distortion that no cute little genre name could ever do justice.
96. AJ Suede – “Slit Your Wrist Vertically [Prod. by AJ Suede]“
Maybe I’m just getting old, but the quality of Hip-Hop seems to be dwindling in recent years, or maybe I’m just a white dude and I should shut my gentrifying cupcake ass up when it comes to labeling “good” Hip-Hop. Personally, I think it’s a combination of all these things. Yes, I am a white dude, so I understand that my experiences and opinions are naturally skewed when it comes to critiquing the culture of Hip-Hop, but be that as it may, I’m not going to let that stop me from giving praise where I feel praise is due. And I guess I have sort of aged. My days of smoking weed everyday are behind me, so therefore my days of being a Stoner Rap aficionado are behind me. However, that being said, there’s an overwhelming amount of popular and lesser known “artists” out there nowadays who produce complete and utter shit. Of course this is true of every genre, but I think this mediocrity stands out the most in Hip-Hop, a genre that was built around clever and incisive lyrical delivery. Lyricism is what made me fall in love with the genre, and it’s definitely a lost art in the world of popular, contemporary Hip-Hop, much in the same way that the production side of things has recently been swallowed up by the overwhelming pestilence of monotonous EDM.
Catchiness only gets you so far, at some point you need substance, and young artists like AJ Suede restore my faith in the future of Hip-Hop. He’s a multifaceted artist, both producer and wordsmith, that combines the two to create solid jams like this one. Its rawness harkens back to the past, while simultaneously remaining firmly fixed in the present. After all, the New York native lists Toro Y Moi, James Blake and Jay Electronica as heavy influences, and with role models like that, its pretty hard to go wrong. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to seeing what he blossoms into as he develops and perfects his sound.
95. Kevin Drew – “Good Sex”
Kevin Drew is one of the forefathers of Indie Rock. As a founding member of Broken Social Scene, his eccentricity helped set the tone for over decade of musical goodness. I remember listening to BSS in high school and thinking I was the tits. I definitely didn’t fully get it, but it sounded unlike anything else I had ever heard, which instantly made it “cool”. “Hotel” by them was like my preferred Indie Rock version of the Ying Yang Twins “Whisper Song”. Full on groovy, subdued, whisper-infused chillness.
However, age creeps up on us all, as does maturity and perspective. Your bones and your brain hurt, so you get more direct and straightforward, basically you give less fucks. Kevin Drew now gives less fucks. He’s done trying to push the boundaries of creativity. In fact, his solo stuff is pretty much void of any eccentricity. He’s grown up and his music reflects that. It’s beautiful, sparse, lyrically driven dad jams, and I mean that in the best way possible. This is what graciously aging looks and sounds like.
94. Allah-Las – “Every Girl”
Allah-Las have an aesthetic that they excel at, and they stick to it. They’re like the cool kids in high school. For several years they flourish, they have their vibe and they own it, and their peers love them for it, but eventually it gets old. You see them several years down the road and they’re no longer the bastions of awesomeness that they once were. You start seeing past the façade, and their devil may care attitude starts to look like a sad and pathetic apathy. As every past generation could tell you, coolness has an expiration date. Like anything else it evolves and morphs, but it’s never stagnant. Allah-Las has grown stagnant.
Now don’t get me wrong, a stagnant Allah-Las is better than a lot of other stuff out there (hence them making this list). I mean, I love Allah-Las, and I love their vibe. I’m a sucker for the warmth of their Surf Rock and all of its sunshine-infused chillness. After all, they’ve always harkened back to the past, but there’s a difference between being inspired by the past and staying stuck in the past. Its this distinction that’s led Allah-Las from great to good, or #1 on my 2012 list, to #94 on my 2014 list. However, despite their demise, its safe to say that in the 21st century, nobody can pull off the Surf Rock aesthetic of the 60’s and 70’s quite like them. On this jam they harness that infectious chillness and produce a sedated groove full of that classic mid 20th century vocal interplay. The result, while nothing new, is a solid piece of work that I think every guy can relate to on some level. Seeing the overwhelming amount of beautiful women that populate California on a daily basis can be overwhelming. So much so, that it’s sometimes difficult not to crush on every woman you see. This song is an ode to all those beautiful women and all the brief but exhilarating, and ultimately meaningless crushes we feel throughout the coarse of a day.
93. Naked Geometry – “Baby It’s a Wildworld”
When you think of politically infused music, “subtlety” usually isn’t the first word that comes to mind. However, that’s exactly what Mexico City based artist, Naked Geometry, has done with his The Missing 43 EP. The whole EP is dedicated to the 43 brave students who lost their lives for believing in and fighting for a brighter future. It’s an EP that’s full of haunting minimalism. It’s not volatile or straightforward, but rather, it expresses a vibe or an emotion. This jam in particular seems to capture that balance between heartbreak and confusion. It’s a lurching emotional escape from inner numbness. It’s a melancholy blanket of distorted and reverbed introspection, which echoes through the threatening nihilistic emptiness. It’s what trying to find purpose in tragedy feels like. It’s a feeling that I’ve been far too familiar with during these past few weeks.
92. P A T H – “T R A U M A”
P A T H is what I would call a prodigy. The dude is 16 years old, which is straight up insane to me. Now by no means would his music ever be considered complex, yet somehow through his simple production of various eclectic samples he’s able to create vibes like no other. The result is truly infectious stuff that you can feel deep down in your soul. It’s almost primal, grabbing hold of those visceral emotions and orchestrating them into a cacophony of raw feeling. I can see post-apocalyptic communities of robots and humans dancing around giant bonfires to this jam, experiencing spirituality in the midst of dystopian squalor.
91. AGO – “Mandarin Oranges (Feat. Little Simz & Waldo) (Prod. Sango)”
AGO is a creative collective of up and coming artists that are surprisingly based out of West Michigan. Though I guess when you’re stuck inside for two thirds of the year, you have a lot of time to work on music and hone your craft, but I digress. Waldo and Sango are both members of this talented hodgepodge of northern emcees and producers. However, the artist that stands out the most on this track is Little Simz. The young English emcee has bars for days, and a flow and voice that are smooth as silk. The first time I heard her my mouth was stuck agape, I couldn’t handle so much raw talent in one person. She’s definitely one of the most promising emcees to emerge in 2014, and this jam functions as an introduction of sorts, or a statement of purpose. It’s a verse packed full of sincerity and earnestness, while she seamlessly flows over the syncopated chillness of Sango’s trademarked production. In fact, it’s hard to imagine Simz ever spitting a verse that she’s not 100% invested in. She’s like the female counterpart of Kendrick Lamar in that respect. She’s not just in it for the fame and the riches; she’s in it for a bigger purpose. There’s an urgency about her that’s really refreshing, and I can’t wait to see where it takes her.
