In 2024 there have been several 10, 20, 25, 30 even 50th anniversary albums reissued, remastered, revamped, remixed, revitalized, reconstituted, redeemed, re-recorded and finally released. It has renewed our faith in the music industry’s capacity to come up with ever more bright ideas to capture the attention of the segment of the public that hasn’t left them high and dry for the deep dark forest of streaming music services. In the spirit of this anniversary waltz through the past, we (meaning I) are offering readers the 10-year anniversary of the best songs of 2014. None have been “re-any-thinged,” so we can revisit them in all their former glory.
Counting all the songs on albums, EPs and singles, including covers and other oddities that popped up on YouTube, Instagram and other social media outposts, the total is staggering. The best estimate from “Billboard” took 2,571 Internet pages to list and by their own admission was incomplete, meaning it should have been revised upwards as opposed to the annual EV and hybrid vehicles sales report in the USA, which has been regularly revised downwards, this last one by 30 percent. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics miscounted yet again. Imagine if 30 percent of the songs in 2014 had just disappeared like when The Blip removed half the population in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The unofficial number is 3.5 million songs and that accounts for only the English-speaking part of the world. No one knows (or cares) how many songs there were in other languages, although since I’m fluent in French and Italian it’s shocking those numbers aren’t available.
Initially, the idea was to list the ten best and ten worst in the style of AUK’s “Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It” feature, but the choice was made to hold off and write a second article for the worst of the worst. In all probability, however, posting the worst list will be forgotten since who wants to be reminded of hearing songs that made you want to stuff your ears with cotton balls. This list would have been in numerical order, starting with number one because, well …. life is short, so my mantra is to eat dessert first. BUT, in order to keep to the feature’s guidelines, you’ll have to build your suspense until you get to number 1. Also, it was suggested by my son that a Spotify playlist should be created, but that was quickly dismissed because I don’t stream: music, movies, video games, hobbies, analytics, robotic vacuums, smartwatches or running nude across a football field. Okay, the last one is called streaking.
It must be stated that the following Top Ten Songs of 2014 is, in texting vernacular, IMO. And TBH, I stopped reading the official list after five and a half pages. Drum roll, please.
Number Ten: ‘Turtles All the Way Down’ (Sturgill Simpson, “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music”)
The way to understanding this song and maybe even the universe is by the inscrutable turtles anecdote. Behind shades of Kris Kristofferson, Simpson challenges the listener on several levels, whether to find a way forward between traditional country and progressive alt-country or to deliberate the validity of infinite regress, a sequence of reasoning that asks the question of whether a foundation for all knowledge exists or that some things can never be explained. Simpson has obviously put a lot of thought into this theory but also has put a lot of life into this country ballad. The song resonates as one that Waylon Jennings would have recorded had he been listening to some Grateful Dead music. There’s a kitchen sink of mystic tokens sunk into the lyrics, from LSD and psilocybin, love and mortality, to Jesus, Buddha, the devil and reptilian aliens. Dave Cobb (Brent Cobb’s cuz) produced and played nylon-string guitar as counterpoint to Simpson’s wafting mellotron.
But what gives with the turtles? Well, it goes back to a lecture given by Bertrand Russell on cosmology, where he stated that the sun is the center of the solar system and the earth rotates around it. A lady from the audience piped up to say she had a better theory. Russell asked her what that may be, and she replied, “That we live on a crust of earth which is on the back of a giant turtle.”
Not wanting to give the impression he was taken aback by this wild notion, Russell instead tried to dissuade the lady from her position. “If your theory is correct, madam,” he asked, “what does this turtle stand on?”
“That’s a very good question,” replied the lady, “but I have an answer to it. And it’s this: The first turtle stands on the back of a second, far larger turtle, who stands directly under him.”
“But what does this second turtle stand on?” persisted Russell impatiently.
To this, the lady responded triumphantly, “Simple, Mr. Russell — it’s turtles all the way down.”
Number Nine: ‘All That You Know’ (John Fullbright, “Songs”)
Fullbright cut his teeth playing keys for three years with fellow Oklahoman Mike McClure before a brief stint with Turnpike Troubadours. The song is off his sophomore album, a stripped-down rendition, which is where he shines. Simple unaccompanied electric piano nudges him toward the Billy Joel camp. It starts with Two trees will grow together so closely, that they become one, and together they stay. It’s a Buddhist dharma known as a pratityasamutpada, which refers to all forms of existence being dependent on another form. In this case, the two trees indicate how a relationship should grow and mature with two partners existing side by side rather than curling around each other. The idea resolves with, Love all that is real, love all that you know. Fullbright is the real deal.
Number Eight: ‘Holy War’ (Willie Nile, “American Ride”)
Willie Nile was supported by his live band – guitarist Matt Hogan, bassist Johnny Pisano and drummer Alex Alexander – on the hard rockin’ “American Ride.” The album was actually recorded in 2013 as an indie effort but was picked up and released by Blue Rose in 2014. All you need to know can be found reading the blurb by Bono inside the CD booklet: “It’s a ride alright …. on foot, on horseback, with the occasional roller coaster thrown in. There are a few Americans to discover. The mythic, the magic, the very real. One of the greatest guides to unraveling the mystery that is the troubled beauty of America.” With an opening salvo reminiscent of Hendrix playing ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ Nile erupts, singing God is great, but you’re not. Up yours, Jihadists. He tackles religious sectarianism in this wrathful, feedback-steeped rocker, hearkening back to the days of The Velvet Underground, Max’s Kansas City and the East Village. Launching power chords like heatseeking missiles, Nile takes on people who use religion to incite violence. In an intro to a live version of the song found online, Nile said, “It’s been happening since the crusades. Mankind has got a long way to go still. But there’s got to be a better way of making yourself heard without blowing people up.”
Number Seven: ‘Aloha & the Three Johns’ (Jenny Lewis, “The Voyager”)
At times, Jenny Lewis has to be careful not to become a parody of herself by going heavy on the kitsch in her apple pie delicious songs. Ryan Adams and Mike Viola produced her third album following the disbanding of Rilo Kiley, and they managed to tighten the reins and bring a balance to her mix of playfulness and earnest honesty. On ‘Aloha & the Three Johns’ Lewis takes us on the most emotionally unstable holiday since Chevy Chase took his family to the Grand Canyon in “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” The first verse sounds as if it could have been dialogue in the movie when Clark Griswold’s wife finally becomes exasperated: I’m gonna get mean, if you don’t stop singing that Hawaiian song, How can you hear me scream, if you still got your headphones on? The studio band is tight with ex-Heartbreaker Benmont Tench on organ and Farmer Dave Scher of Farmer Dave’s Roasted Hot Nuts supplying some salty guitar licks. Lewis’ ear for satirical humor is irresistible when she disgustedly spits out, And John’s been avidly reading Slash’s bio, There was a TV set smashed out in front of his room.
Number Six: ‘Grass Is Greener’ (St. Paul & The Broken Bones, “Half the City”)
St. Paul & The Broken Bones are a soul band from Birmingham (Alabama) that recorded this album at the famed Muscle Shoals Studios with Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes) at the controls. This is neo-retro soul on the order of the great ‘60s Tamla/Motown records. Paul (St. Paul) Janeway is a remarkably gifted singer who grew up listening to gospel music in a religious household and studied to become a clergyman before answering the call of his other muse. The album’s title track and its first single, ‘Call Me’ (not the Chris Montez pop hit) is funky and fabulous, but when you hear that gospel piano opening ‘Grass Is Greener’ followed by a grooving horn section straight out of “East Bay Grease,” that superb Tower of Power album, you almost expect to hear Lenny Williams crooning ‘So Very Hard To Go.’ When Janeway comes in and hits notes most singers only dream about, you realize this band is a rare commodity in this pop country world. The track is infused with sweet soul, like getting a warm hug on a chilly evening, wrapping the senses in comfort. When he comes to the chorus and pleads, We put on our Sunday best, We live our quiet mess, it send shivers up and down the spine.
Number Five: ‘Mediocrity Is King’ (Paul Thorn, “Too Blessed to Be Stressed”)
This song is about Walmart Supercenters defining small town America. Residents come home from their jobs, if they have one, warm up a casserole and plant themselves with a beer in front of the TV set to watch mindless, inane shows like “The Voice” and “Family Matters.” As Thorn sings -“They manufacture stars on a TV stage, Johnny Cash couldn’t get arrested today”. Thorn and his co-writer Billy Maddox pull back the curtains on the fractures in society, people not having the same chance as their parents and grandparents were afforded to pull themselves up to a better way of life. They learn to settle. They are no longer seen as assets to the community. Instead, we get DEI hires where mediocrity is rewarded – “Republicans and Democrats are breaking my heart, I can’t tell those sons of bitches apart”. Politicians and corporate interests have aligned to the detriment of the average citizen. Those in power don’t even care about the wishes and desires of the populace and won’t as long as people vote the “right way.” How depressing a thought is that? “They used to shake your hand, when you walked through the door, Red, white, and blue, It was our little town”. Thorn’s song is the bastard offspring of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Our Little Town’, where its narrator hates the town he grew up in and can’t wait to get out.
Number Four: ‘Chemical Plant’ (Robert Ellis, “The Lights from the Chemical Plant”)
Lake Jackson is a Texas town built by engineers from Dow Chemical to provide housing and shopping for its several thousand workers. Robert Ellis grew up there and this song (and album) were influenced by memories of watching “the lights from the chemical plant burn bright in the night like an old kerosene lamp” through the constant haze hovering over the nighttime sky. The song is built on the undercurrent of a drone over which Ellis exhales the melody like exhaust fumes floating over a tableau of lyrics stark as the hardscrabble terrain surrounding the town. Two young lovers sit outdoors watching those lights transform into stars blinking over “the factories and churches that lay on dusty gravel roads”. The flow of sexual energy acts as a comfort and refuge from the dreariness of life there with its murky truths unheard, drowned out by the blare of the siren announcing the changing shifts at the factory. The relationship inevitably is doomed and breaks down like pressure drop in a line carrying petrochemicals, which Ellis reveals later on in the song ‘Houston’ as the young man moves away from the town.
Number Three: ‘Wind Don’t Have to Hurry’ (John Hiatt, “Terms of My Surrender”)
This is the no-punches-pulled John Hiatt that so many of his listeners cherish. Driven by the relentless mandolin and backing vocals of Brandon Young, ‘Wind Don’t Have to Hurry’ becomes a dark portrait of modern life, waiting for the thought police to ring the doorbell and haul you away. There is no writ of habeas corpus to protect your rights, no platform to express your dissent. “They say you have no liberty, If you’re who they’re looking for”. If this was 2023 instead of 2014, the song would call to mind the Biden/Harris administration’s proposed Disinformation Board, chaired by Nina Jankowicz, a self-serving disinformation expert who “shuddered to think what would happen if free-speech absolutists like Elon Musk would take over Twitter.” Well, Musk changed the social media platform’s name to X and opened it up to people of all sociopolitical viewpoints. Hiatt sounds positively riled while reciting the lines as if the wind was blowing through his soul in the studio, perhaps as a result of trying to pull back the curtain to show who’s controlling the puppet.
Number Two: ‘World of Strange Design’ (Rosanne Cash, “The River and the Thread”)
A great storyteller knows how to set the scene. They understand the importance of presentation and absorption. They recognize it’s necessary to pique someone’s curiosity, sustain their attention and resolve the narrative in a purposeful, stirring way. Rosanne Cash ticks all these boxes on her magnificent “The River and the Thread” album, her first for Blue Note, especially on the title track as well as ‘World of Strange Design.’ Cash heads off into deepest mystery – “walking across a ghostly bridge to a crumbling promised land” – carried along by the bluesy slide guitar of Derek Trucks and the wispy ringlets of arpeggios from her co-writer John Leventhal. She’s exploring the confounded identity of coming from the South – “If Jesus came from Mississippi, if tears began to rise”, and the impact of fate. Cash’s voice is clear and sonorous, alive with the accumulated wisdom of her journeys as part of one of music’s royal families.
Number One: ‘Wish Me Luck’ (Chuck Prophet, “The Night Surfer”)
The biggest news event in 2014 was the baffling disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which had millions of cable news viewers tuning in every night to watch “breaking news” of random unidentified airplane parts floating in the Indian Ocean. In popular music, however, the big event was the release of Chuck Prophet’s “The Night Surfer” on Yep Roc, an album filled with his trademark half-spoken-half-sung songs, throaty smoke-filled-room vocals, irony in spades, tantalizing hooks and a great sense of humor. I wish you luck finding a better song to encapsulate the year than ‘Wish Me Luck,’ which is described as being “a song about a lunatic” co-written with frequent collaborator Klipschutz. Prophet never takes himself too seriously – “My life is an experiment, it doesn’t prove a thing”. This produces characters that are at the same time likable and weird, making offhand remarks like “Wish me luck. Even if you don’t mean it, Wish me luck, If it’s not too much to ask, Wish me luck, It’s not like I really need it”. The guitars of Prophet and James DiPrato jangle in harmony while former Tubes drummer Prairie Prince propels the band. You can always count on some baseball references with Prophet: “We just tapped into this boasting sort of Kenny Powers (TV series “Eastbound and Down”) narcissistic guy that’s also very lovable. You know, the guy at the party that’s bragging about his adventures and holding forth and at that point it wrote itself. We had a specific guy in mind too, but …. That’s better left to the imagination.”
