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Best music of 2014: Eight albums and four singles that deserve kudos

 
WASHINGTON - JANUARY 17:  U2 bandmembers, (L-R) Adam Clayton, Bono, Larry Mullen Jr and The Edge pose after arriving January 17, 2009 in Washington D.C. U2 is scheduled to perform at the first of many events planned to mark the inauguration of United States President-Elect Barack Obama. The band is due to play the "We Are One" concert at  Lincoln Memorial tomorrow alongside a host of U.S. artists, such as  Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, James Taylor, John Legend and will.I.am. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON - JANUARY 17: U2 bandmembers, (L-R) Adam Clayton, Bono, Larry Mullen Jr and The Edge pose after arriving January 17, 2009 in Washington D.C. U2 is scheduled to perform at the first of many events planned to mark the inauguration of United States President-Elect Barack Obama. The band is due to play the "We Are One" concert at Lincoln Memorial tomorrow alongside a host of U.S. artists, such as Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, James Taylor, John Legend and will.I.am. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)
Published Dec. 23, 2014

You could be forgiven for thinking the year in pop music began last December with Beyonce's Beyonce and ended in October with Taylor Swift's 1989, and nothing released in between even mattered. We'll give you Drunk in Love and Blank Space, fine. But here are eight albums and four singles that also deserve kudos in the year of Queen Bey and T. Swifties. — Jay Cridlin, Times staff writer

Best album you hated on principle:

U2, 'Songs of Innocence'

Songs of Innocence might've gotten a fairer shake had it not been dropped on your iTunes doorstep like the latest phone book from Ma Bell. Too bad because it's really one of U2's more cohesive efforts, especially over the past couple of decades. Lyrically and conceptually, it was a deep, honest and not-always-comfortable reflection of the band's early years and personal lives. Iris (Hold Me Close), a tribute to Bono's late mother, is sonically soaring and lyrically wrenching; Raised By Wolves is a ferocious commentary on Irish violence akin to the band's early work. There are a lot of things about U2 the world justifiably finds intolerable, but this album should not have been one of them.

Best pop album that sounds like it actually did come from 1989

Jessie Ware, 'Tough Love'

Jessie Ware practically demands the pop world bend to her whims — the British singer performs not in sparkly miniskirts but conservative pantsuits, and for her second album, she convinced producer Benny Blanco — who's worked with Katy Perry, Ke$ha and Maroon 5 — to man up and make some authentically grownup R&B. Like her 2012 debut Devotion, Tough Love harkens wistfully to the stately soul of Sade and Lisa Stansfield, all breathy come-ons and finger snaps laid atop satin-sheeted beds of torchy, synthesized bliss. Sorry, Taylor, but no one would believe Shake It Off came from any year but 2014. Ware's Champagne Kisses could've been your aunt's prom theme. And we love it.

Best defense of bro country

Sam Hunt, 'Montevallo'

Browse any Best-of-2014 list, and the two country albums everyone can agree on are Eric Church's The Outsiders and Miranda Lambert's Platinum — both excellent, but, sadly, more on the fringes of what Nashville considers bankable. Forget Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean — the guy who's currently doing the most with songs about pickups, parties and pop-tops is Hunt, a 30-year-old Georgia songwriter whose debut album Montevallo pushes modern country as far as anyone into the world of sexually simmering R&B and pop. Yeah, he still sings about "bikinis, party girls and martinis in the sunshine," but he also sings about small-town breakups and falling in love in the back of a cop car, usually over a beat that would sound right at home on Top 40 radio. Many country fans know his name now. Many more will in 2015.

Best Tom Petty album:

Ryan Adams, 'Ryan Adams'

You know it the moment a slinky organ sidles in behind the determined opening riff of Gimme Something Good: That's Benmont Tench, ain't it? For his first proper studio album in three years, Adams leaned away from his alt-country roots and into full-on Heartbreakers territory, and he even booked Tom Petty's longtime keyboardist (Tench) to help him get there. Ryan Adams is a perfect pastiche of late '70s and early '80s guitar-slinging radio rock — not just Petty, but also Buckingham, Springfield and Browne — and it's the hyperproductive Adams' most polished, focused and consistent release in years. (Honorable mention: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Hypnotic Eye.)

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Best Reinvention of a Rave: Porter Robinson, 'Worlds'

With clubland bangers like Language and Unison in his arsenal, Robinson could've gone the Vegas/Ibiza route and lived off Grey Goose and Red Bull for life. Instead, at age 22, he made one of the year's most daring electronic albums, an introspective and uplifting New Age opus full of the twinkling synthesizers and heartbeat rhythms of indie pop acts like Passion Pit and Chvrches. Not all of the drops were as massive, but that wasn't the point — the point was to make Molly-addled club kids feel the message and melody behind the beat, not just the beat itself. And still, Worlds remains an irresistibly shimmering party soundtrack, a testament to Robinson's preternatural pop talent.

Best Reason Rap's Not Dead:

Run The Jewels, 'Run the Jewels 2'

Is it just us, or was this kind of a dud year for hip-hop? A few albums earned their defenders (Freddie Gibbs and Madlib's Pinata is worth a spin), but by and large, the year's first (only?) album that truly revitalized the game was Run the Jewels 2, the second collaboration between Killer Mike and El-P. Confessional, ferocious, blazing with braggadocio, it's the rare rap record that takes your breath away and prompts you to ask, "Wait, who is that again?" The album's best track, Zach de la Rocha collaboration Close Your Eyes (And Count to F---) , is the most pulverizing four minutes you'll hear all year.

Best Reason Classic Rock's Not Dead:

Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters, 'Lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar'

Led Zeppelin fans keep clamoring for a reunion, but that chatter may die down if Plant keeps releasing albums like Lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar. Proving older doesn't always mean safer, Plant gets more than a little weird on this alternative album, which largely veers away from his recent homages to Americana (2007's Raising Sand) and '60s garage rock (2010's Band of Joy), and sounds a lot more like skittery, jittery, latter-day Radiohead. A tense, trippy reinvention of the bluegrass standard Little Maggie and psychedelic rainshower Pocketful of Golden are highlights.

Best Head Trip: Alt-J, 'This Is All Yours'

It was a good year for conceptual weirdness in rock, from St. Vincent to Tune-Yards to Beck. But few alternative albums were as captivatingly odd as Alt-J's This Is All Yours, on which goofy blues-rock slag-offs (Left Hand Free) meander freely alongside Renassiance-faire interludes (Every Other Freckle) and homages to the death scene from Alien (The Gospel of John Hurt). The British art-rockers blend elements of rock, jazz, folk and thinking man's metal with harmonic choral chants that sound culled from another millennium. Once you let Alt-J into your head, they're tough to get out, even if you have no idea what the hell they're doing in there.

Best Sick Beat:

DJ Snake and Lil Jon, 'Turn Down for What'

Any DJ who did not drop Turn Down For What at some point in 2014 was doing it wrong. Turn Down For What was the year's ultimate musical meme, a thundering rally cry that enlivened and enraptured any crowd that heard it. DJ Snake's snake-charmer synthesizer and bombastic bass set the tone, and Lil Jon's four-word mission statement brought the message home with a bullet. Turn Down for What was a huge diss to the rest of the pop world, and yet it still managed to become the year's defining party anthem.

Best reasons to stay up for 'SNL':

Kendrick Lamar, 'I'; Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars and Mystikal, 'Uptown Funk' and 'Feel Right'

Saturday Night Live has had its share of musical misses over the years, but on back-to-back weeks in November, the show struck absolute gold. First came everyone's favorite young rapper, Kendrick Lamar, ripping through an incendiary performance of euphoric single I, a song that makes Pharrell Williams' Happy sound like a funeral dirge. The next week brought retro soul producer Mark Ronson, who announced his arrival as a modern Don Was with electric performances of Uptown Funk with Bruno Mars and Feel Right with Mars and rapper Mystikal, pictured. If you went to bed after the monologue, shame on you, because you missed the best argument all year for watching SNL live. Well, that and Leslie Jones.