Here is my subjective list of last year's best songs. Someday soon, I'll put the text to the prior years for rereading.
10. Counting Stars – OneRepublic (#2 for 2 Weeks, January) OneRepublic blasted onto to the scene as the band produced by Timbaland on his (not their) major hit Apologize. While that song is epic in its own important way, it hasn’t really been matched by anything they’ve followed up with. I keep hoping that the next OneRepublic song will be the one where I can understand their popularity. Counting Stars is as close to that song as I’ve found. Deeply spiritual, for a pop song anyway, Counting Stars vacillates between awesome sounding platitudes and verses that belie a truly conflicted and ambiguous place. And what platitudes: the Nietchezean “Everything that kills me makes me come alive” lands in the same song as the somewhat Marxist “Take that money, watch it burn; sink in the river the lessons I’ve learned”, which is somewhere between Buddhism and a Mountain Dew ad. But the tabula rasa of spiritual pop makes this a low bar to clear and the song’s production takes you to the top of the waterfall and pushes you off, which is its own feat. Cross-pollination from the past: 80s U2 with a Savage Garden filter over the top.
9. Boom Clap – Charli XCX (#8 for 1 Week, October) There is a distinct thread of sadness that runs through even the happiest songs of 2014. I love the way that Charli XCX’s voice expresses joy and exhilaration; her statement of the title of this song is absolutely right in that wheelhouse. But has there ever been as sad a song as this that is also exhilarating in this way? It would be one thing to expect that a song from the singer of “I Love It” and the hook for “Fancy” would be a rocker and, in many ways, this is. Yet, maybe it’s the continued unemployment of the young or the use of this song in The Fault in Our Stars or what have you, but falling in love with a Boom Clap should not seem so conflicted or scary. Maybe this is what Lorde has wrought, pop that must take itself a little more seriously to make larger statements. The good news is that Charli pulled it off. Cross-pollination from the past: “You Alanis in my P!nk! You got P!nk in my Alanis.”
8. Problem – Ariana Grande featuring Iggy Azalea (#2 for 5 Weeks, June) Let’s clear aside a few problems of our own shall we. Ariana does indeed sound like Mariah, especially on this single (although The Way is still the worst offender). Iggy, for better or for worse, is now included on the lists of female rappers (which is a short list to start with and she is no Eminem). This song’s lyrics seem a cross-decade response to Jay-Z which feels like the worst kind of punching up from relative pop tart neophytes, especially. So, why this Nick singer and why now? It may surprise you to learn that Ariana had the most top tens this year (2 more than anyone else) and, as a result, the shape of the year-in-pop is moving in her direction. Much like the Mariah she echos, I would expect a shift further in her direction in the future. But rather than trying to be predictive, let’s talk about the primary thing this song has going for it. It is fun. Ariana does not have the range to pull off chops-based Mariahish runs, so instead she plays around in her tessitura and keeps the mood light even as she’s spurning, or at least tweaking the nose of, her man (Big Sean in an uncredited cameo provides the whispers). It is this playful quality that makes me most hopeful that Ariana’s direction is not toward vapidity, but rather fully realized happiness. And the Iggy rap is mercifully short. Cross-pollination from the past: Mix one cup of Mariah’s Heartbreaker, one cup Beyonce’s Crazy in Love and one teaspoon of The Andrew Sisters’ South America, Take It Way and simmer.
7. Talk Dirty – Jason DeRulo featuring 2 Chainz (#3 for 5 Weeks, February) The rap end of hip hop is on harder times in the top ten. Songs like Hot Boy, Don’t Tell ‘em and Loyal (the year’s worst top ten) that would have, 5 years prior, been the biggest things instead get tangled up underneath songs by Swift, Sam Smith and Nico & Vinz these days. Your biggest hits with raps come from Nicki and Iggy with varying success and artistic creditability. However, DeRulo still managed to produce two solid runs at the top ten this year and both were decent outings. Talk Dirty was by the more memorable not least for its ethnocentricity (for which I apologize) and its suggestion of international booty calls (for which I am less apologetic). The real trend that DeRulo represents in the top ten this year is the “say the name of the song and then music track turns on a dime and does something crazy” school of pop hits we are currently witnessing. Songs in this category include Turn Down for What and DeRulo’s other hit Wiggle, along with other minor offenders from the British isles. I like this gimmick this year, but I don’t think it is sustainable over the long term. Cross-pollination from the past: Focus your left eye on Pimpin’ All Over the World and your right eye on any Flo Rida song until the two images merge.
6. Chandelier – Sia (#8 for 2 Week, August) As a pop outing, Chandelier is pretty much Sia being Rihanna with slightly darker and more evocative lyrics than usual (and some bizarre vocal runs). This combines nicely with Sia mystique of not appearing anywhere in photos to create a darkness and depth of soul that play strongly against the standards of top 40 generally. And the video, while not really considered, certainly helped propel this song heavenward on the chart. It is the rough edges of Sia’s voice, when they have not been digitally altered, that have transformed the song from being a plaintive cry to something far more existential. Fortunately, the lyrics back this up and, again, instead of being evocative of party time, have a thick slice of sadness baked right in. Cross-pollination from the past: Aimee Mann’s cover of Umbrella.
5. Bang Bang – Jessie J, Ariana Grande & Nicki Minaj (#3 for 2 Weeks, October) 2014, for lack of a better term, was “the year of the woman.” There was a week in the fall when the top 6 positions were all head exclusively by females, which is only the fifth or sixth time in pop history where that happened (on the male side there have been entire months where it was true). I wish that the songs were just a little better, because I do feel guilty that the top two positions on this list are both men, but let’s set that aside for a moment. Instead, I’d like to focus on the fact that women are coming across, more or less, on their own terms. Yes, yes, Max Martin and Dr. Luke are behind most women’s biggest hits these and yes, I know why that’s not great. But the hand of those men seems to be supporting what the women want to do instead of forcing them to be puppets (Ke$ha, notwithstanding; I do feel very bad about that). So this trio takes turns on the mic and actually get to sing power notes and lay down some truth, and then comes the refrain which is both gospel flecked but as sassy as anything Diana Ross every sang. It would be nice to have a woman who could write as many #1 pop tunes like Max and Luke do, especially for other artists. Until they come, I’ll take the women who co-write with them and hope that serves as an apprenticeship for the next score. Cross-pollination from the past: The intersection of Gladys Knight Road and Wilson Phillips Way in a town called Diva.
4. All About That Bass – Meghan Trainor (#1 for 8 Weeks, September) It may have been the year of the woman but it was also the year of the woman’s butt. In addition to Trainor, there was DeRulo’s Wiggle, Minaj’s Anaconda and Jennifer Lopez’s Booty. But Trainor won the race to the bottom. (This, this is why no one will publish my stuff anymore.) Now I don’t much care for body shaming and insulting women with physiques that more closely resemble the modern beauty standard is no substitute for attacking the root causes of women’s need to appear hot to men (namely, shallow men and the culture at large), but any form of empowerment for larger women is indeed a step forward even if it mostly to the side. Postmodern jukebox does some very nice covers of modern pop songs in older styles but their All About that Bass was a bit of a miss for me since it focused so strongly on the upright bass. (I have been informed that it is strange to sing and play the upright bass, but I have no experience with this being so.) Furthermore, the bass is present in the original. From a production standpoint, just about everything in the song works from the close harmonies to various mixing of Meghan’s voice to make her into an army of women. Plus, I ain’t no size 2 neither. Cross-pollination from the past: The Chordettes travel through time to meet Sister Sledge in a teen sex comedy version of a Women’s Studies class.
3. Shake It Off – Taylor Swift (#1 for Week, September) Surely, I have nothing new to say about Taylor’s rise from country to pop, from teen pawn to 20s queen, from simple girl to sophisticated woman, from Nashville to New York. She seems to have picked up a lot of haters along the way and here she repudiates them with a ‘sick beat’ indeed. I wish her the best, as she is making the best collections of songs that we call “albums” these days. I even like Blank Space (#17 this year), just not as much. It’s just that I have little to add to the Taylor runs the world argument except that every step has been one that I have liked. Cross-pollination from the past: Physical by Olivia Newton-John overlaid with 50-50 Yeah by Usher and Rumors by Timex Social Club and some of the words from the Athena myth.
2. Stay With Me – Sam Smith (#2 for 2 Weeks, August) If 2014 has more than its serving of sad songs that are not about butts, then Sam Smith is the king of that world. Sam’s voice is in the Percy Sledge school of tortured but real. Here he deploys it with more gospel overtones to deliver a short, simple plea for another tomorrow with his lover. Some have described Smith as an up and coming male Adele and, as in Rolling in the Deep, the bass drum heartbeat makes all the difference in the opening. The voices that join Smith in the refrain represent inertia, the universal force keeping the two of them together. So you take something really complicated, like the crisis point in a relationship, and you boil it down to its essence and then you smoosh that into half the volume and you have this dense heartfelt song. Cross-pollination from the past: When a Man Loves a Woman performed by an Aaron Neville/George Michael gestalt backed by the Soul Stirrers.
1. Happy – Pharrell Williams (#1 for 10 Weeks, March) Of course, not every great song is sad. I broke my leg in February. I’m better now, but then I fell on ice and had surgery to insert a metal rod down the middle of my leg. Surgery was at the end of the day Wednesday. John Sams, my co-conspirator in all of this, called my hospital room on Thursday to see how I was doing and to tell me that Happy had finally reached number one. For a brief moment, I didn’t think about the casted leg at the end of the bed, but instead about the charts had gotten one right. At its peak popularity, Happy was the biggest song in the world. Pharrell captured hearts and minds with a song that so specifically captured a feeling of elation that it is no wonder he has found it difficult to follow-up with another tune. What could you need other tha a simple way to say I’m happy with the world as it is? Williams is a national treasure, who put into words a feeling that has been strangely absent from its discourse for a long time. Plus, he did it smooth and easy right across the plate. Many of the songs on this list will last a decade or more when the next generation can sing along, Pharrell’s will be around a lot longer than that.Cross-pollination from the past: Earth, Wind & Fire invite Billy Preston to sit in on their song written by Michael Jackson left off the Off The Wall album.
Runners-up: Pompeii – Bastille, Rather Be – Clean Bandit, Let It Go – Idina Menzel, Let Her Go - Passenger