Skip to main content

THE 20 BEST TRACKS OF 2014 AT YEAR'S END.

We've had great pop, indie, dance, rock and soul songs in 2014 from the likes of David Bowie, and bombast from U2, and new ideas from Prince, new rare pathos from Stevie Nicks, comebacks from Billy Idol and Echo and the Bunnymen, and mournful Beck... and none of these makes our ultimate top 20 of tracks from 2014 you can locate on Spotify (UK) - sorry Morrissey. Here is our countdown, with three-word reviews. Tell Eyewear what you think.

1. 2: 54 - 'The Monaco' - indie pop heaven.
2. Alvvays - 'Archie, Marry Me' - smartest summer track.
3. Banks - 'Begging For Thread' - dark sexy pop.
4. Charlie XCX - 'Boom Clap' - big breakthrough hit.
5. Childhood - 'Right Beneath Me' - the new Smiths.
6. Dum Dum Girls - 'Rimbaud Eyes' - pitch-perfect 80s retro.
7. Ella Henderson - 'Ghost' - uplifting radio moment.
8. Fat White Family - Touch The Leather' - creepy twisted indie.
9. Foxes - 'Glorious' - as title suggests.
10. Lana del Rey - 'Cruel World' - David Lynch pop.
11. Radiator Hospital - 'Cut Your Bangs' - cute quirky indie.
12. Sam Smith - 'Stay With Me' - song of year.
13. SBTRKT, feat. Ezra Koening - 'NEW DORP, NEW YORK' - cool odd dance.
14. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - 'Stranger To My Happiness' - super retro soul.
15. Simple Minds - 'Honest Town' - new gold song.
16. Sleater-Kinney - 'Bury Our Friends' - best indie track.
17. The Smashing Pumpkins - 'Drum + Fife' - implausibly cool return.
18. St Vincent - 'Digital Witness' - new David Byrne.
19. The War on Drugs - 'Red Eye' - great beer rock.
20. Warpaint - 'Keep It Healthy' - best indie album.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".