Retrospective of 2014

Disclaimer: This blog is closed. Opinions on certain subjects stated in this post have changed since it was posted.

With 2015 beginning, I decided to write down a few short notes about my thoughts on 2014 as a whole. To start, I would like to say 2014 was not a very good year for music, but not as bad as I see other people making it out to be. While the low points were very bad, there were some great highs this year as well.


One thing I noticed this year was that the charts were not moving very much around the top 10, which I believe is what resulted in some far more low-charting songs ending up on the year-end hot 100, in spite of a relatively low peak, and run on the charts. There were also several new artists debuting on the charts this year, though I doubt many of them will stick around. Shame, too, as I felt most of them were actually pretty good.
Another noticeable shift was that this year, of the younger pop stars who received great success, it was Ariana Grande who got the most success, managing to get four top 10 hits this year. Last year's biggest successes in this category, Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, were mostly absent this year. For Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez, that was because they did not release anything. Miley Cyrus had songs that managed to hold over from last year, being "23", unfortunately, and "Wrecking Ball", but also had a minor hit with "Adore You" early in this year. She was also featured on will.i.am's "Feeling Myself", which sucked, but was at least better than Nicki Minaj's new collaboration with Beyonce, of the same title. Selena Gomez didn't release anything for most of the year, until later, when she released "The Heart Wants What It Wants", which was actually a pretty good song, and it has since hit the top 10. Demi Lovato, however, did release songs, but only really received minor success, with "Really Don't Care".
There was also the influence of the internet. Personally, I feel there has been plenty of good and bad influence here. One good thing is that it allows more diversity on the charts, and more ways to discover music that you wouldn't have found otherwise. Unfortunately, it also has memes influence the charts, which can be a disaster. Most noticeable, in hip hop especially, was the influence of Vine on the charts. This lead to, or at least aided, the success of acts like Bobby Shmurda, Young Thug, iLoveMakonnen (I feel dumber every time I write that goddamn name) and Rae Sremmurd. Now, what I've noticed, is that virtually all of these hits have been pretty damn bad, with Rae Sremmurd probably being the worst of the group, but Young Thug made me realize something new to dread. Remember how with songs like "Friday", they would get popular for being complete crap, or with songs like "Harlem Shake", they would get success thanks to some meme, and then the song and artist just disappear. What I'm dreading the most from Vine is the arrive of big mock-stars. I stated my piece on "Lifestyle" and Young Thug on my worst list, but I failed to mention this. What I mean by mock-star is an aritst (or "artist", in this case) who gets hit after hit from Vine, just for people laughing at how terrible the songs are. Young Thug also had a minor hit earlier this year with "Stoner", possibly the worst song of the year, period, and now has another hit on the bottom half of the hot 100 with Rae Sremmurd, on the absolute atrocity "Throw Sum Mo". Young Thug has only really had one big hit so far, but these minor hits may suggest that he could stick around just for being complete crap. This is the biggest thing that bothers me, and I also think there may be more coming, God forbid.
So as a whole for this year, being where I begun looking closer at trends, these are some notes I've begun with. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

Next review: Song review: "Jealous" by Nick Jonas