The Top Ten Songs of 2014

It's the season for lists. Although Santa didn't get me the majority of the things that I asked for like, world peace, or barring that absolute power for myself to rule in dominion over the universe. Maybe next year. Fingers crossed.

In no particular order, except that I've put them in order so you should pay attention: the top ten songs of 2014....kind of.

1. Thinking out Loud by Ed Sheeran-

The first time I heard this song I was driving to work and was immediately taken with how incredibly sweet this song is. The existentialist philosophies of Hume and Sartre be damned, let's just be sweet to each other for a while. All we've got is to spend this evening, this day, this month, this decade loving each other more. Even if we're old. But then we'll probably have to remind each other to take pills and adjust the television volume to accommodate our hearing loss. But it's all going to be okay. Look at all those dead stars.



2. Tenerife Sea by Ed Sheeran
I'm certain that if I was writing for Pitchfork I would criticize the simplicity of these two songs, how they are just some guy quietly singing over a guitar about loving someone with lyrics that aren't quite the poetry of Bob Dylan or Dylan Thomas or a girl that I went to graduate school with named Dylan. However, sometimes it's nice just to think about how someone looks wonderful in a dress or a suit and appreciate the fact that you love them. Also, his voice is nice isn't it?



3. Blank Space by Taylor Swift
There are better songs on the album. However, there are not any catchier songs that came out in 2014. I've witnessed several people lovingly singing this song in the last few weeks. I might have been one of them. I already wrote an extensive review of the album, so I won't spend anytime telling you how great it is because I'm a nightmare who writes like a daydream. 




4. Riptide by Vance Joy
It's one of those songs that somehow slips through the cracks of popular music and when you hear it you're confused as to why you like it unironically. It's okay. We can like it unironically together. 



5. If I Needed you

The problem with The Broken Circle Breakdown is that it's way to melodramatic and strange. The problem with this song from the movie is nothing. It's beautiful.

 "I see your reflection, ghostlike in the window, and now I am watching you, watching me, watching the rain. I don’t remember anything well. The act of love is an invention. You put your arms around my neck and lean into me. Your skin smells of soap and lavender. Shhh. Quiet, my love. The rain is falling in the garden—it sings."



6. Five Hundred Miles Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan

This isn't the version by the Proclaimers. Sadly. So sadly. However, this is Justin Timberlake singing like the man we always knew that JT was underneath all that rocking of body and getting sexy on dance floors. Secretly, he just wanted to sing us a nice folk song and marry Jessica Biel and strum his banjo on the porch. I love him too. 



7. Scare Away the Dark by Passenger

I liked hearing this song roughly once a week for a while. It put me in a good mood. A friend of mine said it was kind of self-righteous. She wasn't wrong, but if you can talk about running through a forest and staring at stars while singing loudly, which I did on the four occasions that I karaoke'd this year, channeling Fern Gulley, the poetry of John Keats, Luddites and the magic and stupidity of youth then I'm probably going to be inspired by your song. If just for a couple of minutes. 





8. All I want by Kodaline
Guys. I cried a lot during Fault in Our Stars. I cried when this song played. Maybe we can cry together sometime. 

I cried fourteen times during the movie. Most of the tears were of the mist variety, though it’s hard to say because I wear contacts, which have a tendency to dry out my eyes. I never exceeded a total of two tears, one from each eye. My right eye was much sadder than the left, and often produced a tear that spilled down my cheek until I wiped it away with the pointer finger of my right hand.

                Going in, I had planned on crying. I was looking forward to crying. I won’t explain why because I’m not sure that I had any particular reason other than that I knew the movie was intended to make me cry, and that I wasn’t going to resist that. I was going to row out of the theater on a river of tears.

9. Classic by MKTO
Guys. All of you. Let's go out dancing sometime. I want you to come with me. Let me know when you're free. 



T. 10th Dance with Me Tonight by Olly Murys
No seriously, hit me up. Or we can just dance at work or in Downtown Silver Spring.



T. 10th Ignition Remix R Kelly (who is terrible)

I don't know what this song about. I recently did a karaoke version. I think it might be a car and a party or something. But it's always in the top 10 of every year, including 1786.

T. 10th Counting Crows Raining In Baltimore
Also, every year since its inception including the year it came in second to Beethoven's fifth Symphony.