Top 100 Music Albums of 2014 by Norman Bates

From buzzdainer 03/14/2018 22:27

Fantastic 2014 chart! Some favorites I'd like to single out for special praise are Black Messiah (great multi-genre work), Pom Pom (super weird, but oddly compelling), Hour of the Dawn (great twee pop), and Cilvia (love that southern hip hop). Great stuff here--I always enjoy your year charts!

From Tap 12/11/2014 09:51

Was adding this Gabriel Saloman album to my chart and noticed you already had it on yours, which means I basically need to check out everything on here I haven't heard. Cause that album is really really great.

From Skinny 08/24/2014 14:24

Loads of cool stuff here; already begun acquiring what I haven't heard, and I'm gonna start with that Chris Weeks record, which sounds great. I don't know if we're on the verge of something big happening, or if we've just hit a point now where the way we consume music means that there is more and more great new music readily available to the masses. There doesn't seem to be an all-encompassing scene on the horizon, nothing that could define a generation in the same way punk or disco or house music or gangsta rap could reasonably be argued to have done, but I don't think that's a bad thing. What I do think is, as more and more people have more and more access to more and more music from previously very niche scenes across the globe, we're seeing a form of cross-pollination whereby those creating music feel free of pigeonholes and thus free to pull from a much wider range of influences than ever before. It means that there are less and less gaps between genres, and so you have people who would previously have designated themselves as listeners of certain genres (e.g. indie kids, hip-hop heads, ravers, punks, etc.) branching out and listening to new and increasingly interesting sounds, which in turn means there is an ever-growing audience for artists who want to make pretty much whatever music they want. This new-found freedom can only be a good thing, though I guess a possible downside is the idea that because we have such a wealth of new music to choose from we might be becoming rather impatient as listeners, always looking for something new and exciting and immediate, always expecting artists and albums to make the listener love them, as opposed to the listener taking the time to learn to love artists and albums. Again, whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your point of view, but on the whole I think the positives of this cultural change massively outweigh the negatives. I know I'm certainly excited about the current state of music, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. We're in a boom period for musical creativity, and long may it continue. There are more and more avenues opening up everyday for people who aren't necessarily interested in the stuff that gets into the charts or is critically acclaimed by the bigger publications, and this can only be a good thing. It also has the knock-on effect of forcing mainstream music to become weirder/more experimental, or at least forcing the mainstream to adopt weirder/more experimental music, which again can only be a good thing. Whether we're on the verge of something massive, I don't know. I'd argue that maybe we're right in the middle of something massive.

Hope you're keeping well anyway, and that you're having a great summer holiday mate. Not sure when you're back at school, we start in a week and it's all come around a little too quick for my liking. Anyway, peace and love as always.

From Oselju 07/18/2014 15:19

90/100 seulement car je regrette que le dernier Beck ne figure pas dans cet excellent TOP 2014.
90/100 rien que pour Sun Kil Moon en 1ère place.
Après je vais devoir écouter une bonne quinzaine d'album inconnus au bataillon ! Merci.

From CellarDoor 06/29/2014 07:23

Difficile de comparer, je n'ai quasiment rien écouté parmi ces albums ! Pas mal de choses à découvrir ! :)