Matthew’s 2014 Media Matters Mix Tape

Top songs of 2014

Whether this is fueled by a love of music, my penchant for creating traditions, or simply a lack of better ideas (or all three?), I present the third annual Media Matters Mix Tape, honoring some of the best songs of the year.

In the spirit of my National Mid-Year Music Award Day in July, I made up fake awards for these 14 songs. The awards may be bogus but the songs are legitimate winners.

In the spirit of my National Mid-Year Music Award Day in July, I made up fake awards for these 14 songs. The awards may be bogus but the songs are legitimate winners.

• Most true statement in a song title: “I Got More Soul” by Bobby Patterson. The 70-year-old Patterson released an album of the same name this year. Though he was known more as a producer in the 1960s he still has the onstage energy of a teen and has more soul in his pinky toe than most people have in their whole body.
• Best duet: “Dearly Departed” by Shakey Graves (featuring Esmé Patterson). Shakey Graves, a.k.a. Alejandro Rose-Garcia, has been known primarily for his live shows the past few years, but he proved he can match the energy of his concerts in his songwriting. Patterson matches Rose-Garcia’s every emotion on this song when they both sing, “You and I both know that the house is haunted, and you and I both know that the ghost is me.”
• Best radio-friendly song that received zero airplay: “Carousel Ride” by Rubblebucket. My oldest daughter once asked me, “Why do you listen to such weird music?” and I didn’t have a great answer. But in the case of Rubblebucket, I don’t understand why this Brooklyn band isn’t more widely accepted. Even my daughter can admit that this hard-driving-yet-pop-y song about coming of age is a real toe-tapper.
• Best use of the word boogie by a German band: “Stolen Dance” by Milky Chance. Speaking of toe-tappers, this German duo scored an international smash hit with this undeniably catchy song. Their earnest and innocent use of the word boogie—35 years too late—is very endearing and part of this song’s charm.
• Best protest song about an issue I never thought of before: “The Body Electric” by Hurray for the Riff Raff. Jerry Holsopple reviewed the full album from Alynda Lee Segarra, a.k.a. Hurray for the Riff Raff, last month for Media Matters, and I agree with his overall sentiment. While the album is decent, this particular song is superb as it takes on one of folk music’s tried-and-true staples, the murder ballad, and questions why killing women in song is overdone and even celebrated.
• Catchiest song sung by a former Australian Rules football player: “Riptide” by Vance Joy. This singer-songwriter gave up a career as a football player in Australia in order to pursue music, and that is turning out to be a good call. This song was No. 1 on the Billboard Alternative charts and is currently climbing the pop charts. I may also be partial to this song because my oldest daughter performs an enjoyable puppet show to this song using origami Star Wars characters.
• Best classic arena rock song that will never be played live in an arena: “Don’t Wanna Lose” by Ex Hex. Nineteen-seventies guitar riffs may be passé, but Mary Timony, one of the best guitarists today, brings back that arena sound on the band’s aptly titled hard rocker, Rips.
• Best philosophical country song: “Turtles All the Way Down” by Sturgill Simpson.Country music is often stereotyped as being a genre for songs about drinking, cheating, and trucks. But the genre is rich these days with diversity, and no one exemplifies that better than Simpson, who channels Stephen Hawking in this song released on one of the year’s best country albums, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music.
• Best textured-yet-sonically pleasing song: “Seeds” by TV on the Radio. When critics use the words “wall of sound,” “textured,” and “layered,” I usually know I’m not going to like an album as much as they do because sometimes melody is buried under experimentation. But this veteran New York rock band, who has done their fair share of experimentation over the years, produced their most listenable album to date with Seeds. The title song shows off their harmonies and musical playfulness at its best.
• Catchiest song about therapy: “I Wanna Get Better” by Bleachers. We all want to get better, I suppose, but there is nothing more therapeutic than to crank this song up in the car on stressful day and scream “I Wanna Get Better.”
• Best commentary on the so-called American dream: “First World Problems” by Weird Al Yankovic. Known more for his parodies over the years, Al continues to write excellent originals as well. In his best original song since “Dare to Be Stupid” in 1985, Al sings about a man’s life that is stressful because his shower turns cold after an hour, a friend calls him instead of texting, and a barista won’t make a design in his latte foam.
• Best love song written to a piece of meat: “The Ballad of Mr. Steak” by Kishi Bashi.Recycled material alert! I had this same song and same category back in my article in July, but it’s no coincidence that I have eaten more steak in this past year because of this song. Yes, it’s goofy when Kishi Bashi sings, “Mr. Steak, you were Grade A,” but never did I have the urge to dance and eat red meat simultaneously until I heard this song.
• Best Song about my hometown: “Goshen ’97” by Strand of Oaks (Goshen, Indiana) will never match New York City and Paris—or even Omaha, probably—in terms of the number of times a town or city is used as a muse. But Goshen native Timothy Showalter belts out an autobiography of growing up as a teen in the Maple City, specifically in 1997, the year I moved from Goshen for good.
• Simplest message in a song: “Divisionary (Do the Right Thing)” by Ages and Ages. Now I live in Portland, home of Ages and Ages, who released a great album Divisionary this year and packed it full of their unison sing-alongs and handclaps. This is one of my youngest daughter’s favorite songs of the year, and as a parent, how could I not love my child singing, “Do the right thing, do it all the time,” over and over again?