The year was dominated on nearly every other front by young women:
Charli XCX's reinvention of punk-pop, Miranda Lambert's Nashville
platinum-blonde ambition, St. Vincent's indie-rock apotheosis, FKA
Twigs' haunting avant-R&B and, above all, Taylor Swift's unstoppable
pop juggernaut. The politically charged hip-hop of Public Enemy found a
new-school parallel in Run the Jewels, the storytelling Los Angeles
breeze of Dr. Dre found new life in YG and Flying Lotus took rhymes and
beats into spectacularly abstract territory. Here's
10 albums that we
wouldn't turn down.
10
Taylor Swift, '1989'
America's sweetheart has been writing perfect pop tunes since the
day she hit Nashville. Yet it's still a delectable shock to hear her
ditch the banjos for an album of expert Top 40 gloss – like Dylan going
electric, except with more songs about Harry Styles. She sounds right at
home over these Max Martin beats, sick and otherwise.
9
Mac DeMarco, 'Salad Days'
The 24-year-old Canadian singer-guitarist's second album – a warm,
polished set of sun-drenched folk-rock jams – feels like it could have
been a lost used-vinyl-bin treasure from the Seventies. DeMarco channels
Harry Nilsson, the Beach Boys, Steely Dan and the Beatles, but the
offbeat stoner vibes are all him.
8
Run the Jewels, 'Run the Jewels 2'
El-P and Killer Mike made 2014's greatest hip-hop record. Guest
shots flare in the avant-noise darkness: Zack de la Rocha riffs on
Philip K. Dick; Gangsta Boo flips a porn-rap script. But it's the
chemistry between Mike's on-the-ground Dirty South flow and El's
big-picture indictments that lights this up like a Brooklyn bridge.
Lana Del Rey, 'Ultraviolence'
Del Rey silenced her detractors with an intoxicating collection of
indie-noir anthems. With more live instrumentation in her smoky glam
grooves, she plays enough characters to fill a Raymond Chandler novel:
On "Sad Girl," she's a sultry mistress; on "Brooklyn Baby," she's a
snarky kid. Most of all, she's a pop voice like no other.
Charli XCX, 'SUCKER'
Charli XCX is the pop star 2014 was waiting for: a badass
songwriting savant who's the most fun girl in any room she steps into.
The 22-year-old Brit came into her own with SUCKER, a
middle-finger-waving teenage riot packed into 13 punky gems. It's a
dance party, a mosh pit and a feminist rally – Charli's definitely in
charge.
Miranda Lambert, 'Platinum'
Lambert began as a mainstream-country bad girl. This year, she became an institution. Platinum
smoothly balances solo-act introspection with A-list ring grabs,
co-starring the likes of Carrie Underwood and Little Big Town. Notably
absent, though, is superstar hubby Blake Shelton – sister's doin' it for
herself.
St. Vincent, 'St. Vincent'
After her string of increasingly excellent records, indie guitar
heroine Annie Clark's fourth solo album felt like a coronation: a
masterful set of skewed but sticky pop hooks, subtly sexy electro-funk
grooves and Dada poetry that aches for real. And her fiery guitar solos
are sharper and more surprising than ever. Bow down.
The Black Keys, 'Turn Blue'
The Keys and Danger Mouse spool out everything from Seventies funk
to disco throb to drive-time guitar grind, making music that could evoke
lonely late nights or burnt-rubber desert highways, jittery paranoia
and boundless possibility. It's the sound of America's most innovative
arena rockers in full command.
Bruce Springsteen, 'High Hopes'
This new peak in Springsteen's 21st-century hot streak is his most
gloriously loose, vibrant album in years. In the past, Springsteen would
never have allowed himself to release an album that includes two covers
and reworked versions of his own older tunes, let alone give Tom
Morello license to splatter virtuoso wah-wah'ed madness over much of it –
but Springsteen was so much older then. Now he's more unpredictable
than ever, and it's working: Despite the varied origins of the songs, High Hopes
hangs together with striking sonic and thematic consistency, finding
fresh angles on his central concern: the fault lines in the American
dream. Springsteen worked on much of the album during his
year-and-a-half-long Wrecking Ball world tour, and the
expansiveness of that tour's 19-piece incarnation of the E Street Band –
featuring a horn section, backup singers and a percussionist – carries
over to the big, bold arrangements of tracks like "High Hopes" (first
recorded in the early 1990s by an obscure L.A. punk crew called the
Havalinas), the bar-band romp "Frankie Fell in Love" and the gangster's
portrait "Harry's Place." The revamped version of "American Skin (41
Shots)" – a song about police shooting a young black man, originally
echoing the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999 – proved to be a tragically
prescient choice for the year of Ferguson. But the album's high point
is the Morello-Springsteen duet on "The Ghost of Tom Joad," where
Morello's rage-filled, celestial solo is a song in itself. The whole
thing runs together like a marathon gig, united by a hard eye on the
national condition and the fire in Springsteen's voice.
U2, 'Songs of Innocence'
There was no bigger album of 2014 – in terms of surprise, generosity and controversy. Songs of Innocence is
also the rebirth of the year. Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry
Mullen Jr. put their lives on the line: giving away 11 songs of guitar
rapture and frank, emotional tales of how they became a band out of the
rough streets and spiritual ferment of Seventies Dublin. This is
personal history with details. In the furiously brooding "Cedarwood
Road," named after Bono's home address as a boy, he recalls the fear and
rage that drove him to punk rock. "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" is a
glam-stomp homage to the misfit voice that inspired Bono to sing. And
that's his mother, who died when Bono was 14, still guiding and
comforting him in the chorus of "Iris (Hold Me Close)."
This is a record full of the band's stories and triumph, memory and
confession detonated with adventure and poise. In its range of sounds,
there may be no more complete U2 album: The band bonded its founding
post-punk values with dance momentum in "Volcano" and the raw, jagged
"Raised by Wolves," and humanized the digital pathos of "Every Breaking
Wave" and the harrowing "Sleep Like a Baby Tonight" with the vocal
folk-soul warmth of The Joshua Tree. "I have a will for survival," Bono sings in the closing track, "The Troubles." Songs of Innocence is the proof – and the emotionally raw rock album of the year, at any price
