totally top five 2k14: albums

I like Donald Glover¹ and Culdesac is probably one of my most listened to albums ever. I’ve probably played “Let Me Dope You” hundreds of times and I’m still not tired of it.

Because the Internet is a great mix of solid verses, excellent beats, slow jammin’, and straight up JAMZ. I fell in love with “IV. Sweatpants” because it’s freakin’ great and sounds so, so good being blared out of my car windows the second the weather is good enough to do it.² I also love “3005” and “II. Worldstar”. It’s just a solid as hell album.

I did not know Ed Sheeran the first time I ever saw him — on the Grammys, I think — and I genuinely thought he was Patrick Stump every time they cut to him in the audience. To be honest, I still think of him as “Unwashed Patrick Stump” pretty exclusively, despite really being into this album and feeling kind of terribly swoon-y about it.

I like the album as a whole, played in order as intended — which is pretty rare for me. I’m a pick-and-chooser to the extreme with most albums. But my favorites here are “Don’t” because my ears work pretty well and I’m not a fool and “Nina” because that’s my sister’s name, oh and also it sounds like a damn Jason Mraz B-side which is a good thing. I also love “Even My Dad Does Sometimes” because I like crying a lot and “Tenerife Sea” because I’m a walking First Dance Cliché.

All I listened to for SEVERAL months this year was Sam Smith. It is a solid album from beginning to end, but I am super guilty of repeating my faves until Crystal was finally like, “Hey, can we maybe listen to something else?” To be fair, that was after the phase where she was like, “Hey, can I hear “Leave Your Lover” again?”

I’m partial to “Stay With Me”, obviously, but it was “I’m Not the Only One” that got me hooked first. “Life Support” is a killer and had I heard “Not In That Way” in the weird mid-period of Crystal and my relationship, I’d have probably cried so much I’d have had to have been hospitalized for dehydration. So good.

I was very late to the Taylor Swift thing as a whole and if I am being honest, I really only like Red,³ so I was nervous about 1989, but I shouldn’t have been because it’s so, so good.

Okay, “Shake It Off” is genuinely terrible — mostly because the repetition is just so bad — and I really and truly believe that if anyone else except maybe Beyonce released it, it would’ve been universally panned and derided. But the rest of the album is very solid and super fun and satisfying. “Blank Space” is amazing and “Bad Blood” is so good and so hilariously dumb⁴ dramatic great. I L-O-V-E “Out of the Woods” and I could listen to it so loud and for so long that it would be considered torture were I inflicting it on another human being. So good.

I know absolutely 100% nothing about Kiesza. I have her Wiki up right now to read AFTER I set this for posting because saying I know nothing about her has now piqued my curiosity enough to finally hit Google up. I do, however, know that I love this album.

I love her voice, especially when it gets kind of weird and throat-nasal on “Sound of a Woman” and I love that some of the songs, in particular “Hideaway” sound like perfect throwback 90s jamz a la La Bouche and CeCe Peniston. I mean, “What Is Love” is literally a Haddaway cover. She knows exactly what she’s doing.

I think “Losin’ My Mind” is a killer and “Bad Thing” is great and kind of crazy hot. And if that one doesn’t work for you ~sexually, “Piano” should. So solid, so fun, such a great listen all the way through.