The Top Ten Albums of 2014

Ten years ago, music was in rare form, namely because it was one of those all-around years where nearly every genre was batting out classic after classic whether it be rock, rap, R&B or pop, it was hard to find a genre that wasn't having a renaissance which is why this list is one of the most eclectic yet. So come on in and explore the best of the best with these ten fabulous records from a decade in the past.

#10) Lazaretto - Jack White (39 minutes, Blues Rock/Garage Rock Revival)

Jack White's sophomore solo album builds on the momentum he created with "Blunderbuss" two years earlier with his fusion of heavy, bluesy rock and roll with his newfound knack for singer-songwriter tracks, with this set dipping his toes into the world of folk and country for the first time. As always the strongest songs are his heavier selections, spotlighting his roaring vocals and riotous, bluesy guitar riffage but he intersperses these rave-ups with a few slow country ballads fit for a barroom piano where he explores his softer side inspired by his new fatherhood and distaste for modern technology, which he critiques throughout the album. White isn't a writerly artist in the traditional sense, but where his ballads don't always hit, his riffs always do, making this one of his last great projects of his imperial era before the rampant experimentation diluted his strengths. A strong album from one of the last true rock stars.

Essential Tracks: "Lazaretto" "Three Women" "That Black Bat Licorice" "High Ball Stepper"

#9) Give the People What They Want - Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings (33 minutes, Funk/R&B)

Sharon Jone is an artist out of time, cause she was meant to be a Motown powerhouse if she was born just a few years earlier, with a gritty, classic soul voice for the ages, but instead she was born too late for the R&B renaissance and instead became the genre's greatest revivalist in the new milennium. Backed up by her superb band The Dap-Kings, Sharon lays down a polished and professional set of yearning romantic ballads and uptempo punchy soul-pop songs with this album being her most Motown sounding in her career, with countless songs being tailor made for a Gladys Knight or a Diana Ross, but Sharon performs them like she's the only soul diva we've ever needed. While the group's previous records dabbled more in funky grooves, here it is all about pure songwriting, pumping out hit after hit worthy of Berry Gordy's stamp of approval and it makes this one of the outfit's standout projects. A classic lost in time.

Essential Tracks: "Retreat!" "People Don't Get What They Deserve" "Stranger to My Happiness"

#8) Black Messiah - D'Angelo and The Vanguard (55 minutes, Progressive Soul/Jazz-Funk)

It is truly an event when D'Angelo chooses to come out of his artistic hibernation and drop a project, with this being his third album and his first in fourteen years since his turn of the century masterpiece "Voodoo", and he did not disappoint because after a decade and a half of waiting, he came back with force and purpose, laying down a superb set of performances. D'Angelo's music has alwayed towed the line between gritty and gorgeous, which this album pushes to its very limits with a muddy, Sly Stone style mixing job, making the grooves sound live and improvisational over which D'Angelo's Prince-like falsetto is allowed to roar with power and poise. Alongside his typically beautiful love songs, funky grooves and spiritual ballads, D'Angelo and his band get deeply political on this record, with strong themes of Black empowerment and spiritual rejuvenation running through each track. There is a vitality and urgency to this record that none of his other, smoother work has, which makes it a standout in his small but mighty catalog. With this album, D'Angelo proved once and for all that if he was gonna raise his voice he would make it count. I'd love another album by the way (but I'll wait another four years if I have to).

Essential Tracks: "Really Love" "Sugah Daddy" "Another Life" "Betray My Heart"

#7) Dark Comedy - Open Mike Eagle (44 minutes, Alternative Rap)

Open Mike Eagle is nothing if not a profoundly, proudly weird MC and on this record more-so than any other, he embraces that off-kilter sense of humor and pairs it with a sense of impending doom, creating his breakout project, full of hysterical, heady bars and deeply unsettling, chilly production. On this previous projects Mike was able to pioneer his brand of "unapologetic art rap", but here he perfects it by rapping various obscure pop cultural punch lines amidst deeply self-critical introspection viewed through his warped sense of humor. The bars here are so layered that I'm still finding new jokes years later with each listen, but even more so than Mike's awkwardly virtuousic performances are the beats, which sound exactly like the mind of a very anxious person, with jittery rhythms and glacial synths, allowing Mike's raps the space to breathe and bounce off the walls. The album has a distinct feeling of claustrophobia, because the jokes are just there to mask his own insecurities, which makes the album a dynamic listen each and every time. How can anyone not love an album that features a guest verse from Hannibal Burress anyways?

Essential Tracks: "Doug Stamper (Advice Raps)" "Informations" Qualifiers" "A History of Modern Dance"

#6) French Exit - TV Girl (40 minutes, Indie Pop)

TV Girl's full length debut record is an album of soundscapes, lush grooves and sensual, ambient atmospherics more than just songs. The record oozes a calm, sleepy sensuality, particularly in the group's sharp use of sound bites from vintage films to make their compositions feel even more rooted in the steamy romances of the past. While the music itself is soothingly romantic and plush, the lyrics are the epitome of indie snark and self-deprecation, with the narrator playing into various tropes of beautiful girls with empty heads and listless male losers but viewing them askance and questioning their validity. This is by no means a groundbreaking record, but it recontextualizes sex and romance in the modern era in a sharply, witty way over some of the most gorgeously textured bedroom-pop production of its time. A bit of a hidden gem that's been recently rediscovered by the online indie nerds (a title I proudly embrace).

Essential Tracks: "Lovers Rock" "Birds Don't Sing" "The Blonde" "Louise"

#5) ZABA - Glass Animals (45 minutes, Indie Pop/Psychedelic Dance)

The debut project from English indie group Glass Animals is all about vibes, creating a lush sonic landscape where all of their music lives in. By all means, the album sounds like its cover, luxuriating in liquid grooves, pounding drums, shimmering synths and jungle ambience which creates a real sense of world-building. The songs themselves are slight, more often just featuring lead singer Dave Bayley softly cooing some abstract wanderings in his ethereal falsetto over the beats, but this isn't real a song-oriented project, instead it much more so feels like a sonic journey, 45 minutes of living inside the enigmatic album cover with sonic shades of purples, blues, greens and grays living inside your ear drums. There is a plush, ambient nature to these sounds and its inherent mystery makes it an enjoyably low-key listen again and again. Glass Animals would continue to get less and less mysterious with each project, eventually becoming just a run of the mill indie-pop outfit, but here they shroud themselves in a sense of mystery so much so that even the whispiest grooves feel monumentally cool. A remarkable project that lives and dies on vibes.

Essential Tracks: "Gooey" "Black Mambo" "Pools" "Cocoa Hooves" "Flip"

#4) They Want My Soul - Spoon (37 minutes, Indie Rock)

Consistency should be Spoon's middle name, because they haven't ever released an album less than solid in their thirty year career, and this, their eighth studio album, is no exception with the group penning a strong group of rock songs with some of their best, most innovative production, giving the record a sheen of modernity playing off their classic rock style of writing and performing. The work behind the boards is truly what makes this set rise above their other rock solid rock albums with its effortless shimmering qualities, sounding like a cityscape late in the night. Britt Daniel's writing here is nuanced, backed up by some crunchy guitar leads and swirling synth pads leading to one of their dreamiest projects. This album is endlessly relistenable due to is lovely sonic world created over the course of ten razor sharp rock songs. A great rock record, and I'd expect nothing less from Spoon.

Essential Tracks: "Do You" "Inside Out" "Knock Knock Knock" "New York Kiss" "They Want My Soul"

#3 Hozier - Hozier (53 minutes, Indie-Rock/R&B)

Hozier's self-titled debut album is a record out of time, not because it feels like revivalism of a particular era, but because its earthiness feels timeless. This is an album full of primal feelings, howling, keening soulful vocals and ageless poetry. The record is full of bluesy singer-songwriter pieces with chug along with a R&B twist and rock guitars, while remaining definitely Celtic in both its musical references and Hozier's poetric lyricism. While the instrumentals themselves are gritty and earthy, Hozier's voice soars above them with a Celtic soulfulness that few possess, with its own sense of grit and grime. The songs here are remarkably mature for a debut album, wrestling with sexuality, addiction, domestic abuse and social isolation but all written with a wit and an overwhelming sense of melancholia. This is far from a happy album, but the way Hozier delivers each track with so much pathos and punch, it never feels like wallowing. He fights through every emotion with his powerhouse vocals, making the record as life-affirming as it is sometimes hopeless. This is perhaps one of the most distinguished and fully formed debuts of the 21st century and a testament to the timelessness of great songwriting.

Essential Tracks: "Jackie and Wilson" "Cherry Wine" "Take Me to Church" "From Eden" "Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene" "Someone New"

#2 2014 Forest Hills Drive - J. Cole (1 hour and 4 minutes, Conscious Rap/East Coast Hip-Hop)

J. Cole has always found himself as the third horse in the race when it comes to being the defining MC of the 2010s, never quite the critical darling and genre innovator like his peer Kendrick Lamar and never quite as commercially successful and culturally dominant as Drake, but in his own way he is just as important, blazing a trail for low-key conscious hip-hop to make its way back to the mainstream. On this, Cole's third studio album, he does something truly rare in modern hip hop, delivering a full hour long album with no features, a trope he would come to overuse in future releases, but here it is utterly refreshing to spend an entire album with a single voice and a single narrative, making this project feel more intimate than most rap records. Here Cole chronicles his youth and upbringing as a suburban kid in the American South and how distinct that is from most hip-hop, and he does so with a conversational flow and soulful, warm beats that recall the best of his Roc-A-Fella mentors Kanye West and Jay-Z. The appeal of this album lies in its simplicity and its willingness to be truly earnest. There is little to no hyper-macho posturing, in fact Cole does his best work while totally subverting gangsta-isms and cliches, including a potent verse where he destroys the hypothetical hip-hop crown, instead letting us all focus on self-improvement over arbitrary culture wars. This is by no means the most impactful or important rap album of the decade, but it ranks among the best simply because J. Cole is hyper-aware of his place in rap, and here he embraces the every-man storyteller role and delivers a refreshingly honest album in a genre so prone to posturing.

Essential Tracks: "Love Yourz" "No Role Modelz" "03 Adolescence" "A Tale of 2 Citiez" "Wet Dreamz" "January 28th"

#1 1989 - Taylor Swift (59 minutes, Synth-Pop/Singer-Songwriter)

Taylor Swift, for the past ten years, has cemented herself as the definitive pop star of the new milennium, towering above everyone else in scope and influence, but when exactly did that start? For many fans it would be her debut in 2006, but for me it is this record, where she makes the massive transformation from a very talented singer-songwriter to the pop star behemoth she's seen as today. What makes this record so important in her oeuvre? It is her first full throated embrace of pop music after four albums where she strayed further and further from pure country-pop, with this being a dive deep into the world of synth-pop. This album is both a piece of revivalism, true to its title the record's textures and synth-heavy arrangements feel like a modernized update of the bombastic, big screen pop music from the year Taylor herself was born, but it never feels like just revivalism, namely due to Swift's pristine songwriting. The sharpest element of this album is Swift's knack for self-mythologizing, using many tracks on this album to examine and poke fun at her media portrayal as a serial dater and a chronic heartbreaker, turning that character into someone worthy of writing songs about. This album has a sense of humor and self-awareness about it that many of her other albums lack, making this a true standout in her discography. From the uptempo pop choruses, shimmering arrangements from Jack Antonoff (his best production work for Swift by far), the wickedly self-aware punchlines and the soothing, lyrical ballads, this album is Swift's most consistent and enjoyable work. Even the so-called filler tracks would be great singles on a lesser record. This is the only album to come out of the 80s revivalism craze to actually sound like it could stand alongside the classics of that era in terms of songwriting and pure memorability. This is Taylor's "Thriller", her "Like a Prayer", her "Purple Rain" and dammit, I'm always a sucker for a picture perfect pop record. This is the ascendancy of the world's reigning pop superstar, and based on this album, she deserves it.

Essential Tracks: "Style" "Wildest Dreams" "Style" "Out of the Woods" "New Romantics" "Shake It Off" "How You Get the Girl" "Clean"

Thanks so much for taking this journey through 2014 with me. The Best of 2024 drops very, very soon. Happy Listening!