It’s been a great year for music, but then again I think we say that every year! I always love going back through the list of albums that was released this year and count how many albums I’ve listened to, and this year I’ve listened to 34 albums! Which is a pretty good number for me! Of course that’s not counting any EPs or singles either. If I had done that we’d be here forever! I’ve decided to change up my “Best Of” posts a little bit. Since I’ve went back to doing reviews on my Tuesdays, I thought I’d do my favorites of this year on the last Tuesday of the year too.
If you know me pretty well, then you should know I’m a European music scene kind of girl. However, if you were to long on my list of albums I listened to this year, it wouldn’t look like it, but I am! I started off this year listening the American band, Of Mice & Men and I was basically in a whole screamo/metal frenzy for the first six months of the year and then by the end of July everything came crushing down when I watched One Direction: This Is Us movie with my sister. Who knew that would the start of the second half of 2014. For Christmas last year, our neighbors were nice and bought me three $10 iTunes cards in a pack worth $100 and somehow I managed to separate all three of them out by five months. I’ve got a reputation for spending a whole $100 iTunes card in two days. That was a good day! I didn’t necessarily buy any full albums with them, but I do get my favorite tracks and then decided to wait and see if I’d get them later.
There were quite a few European albums that kind of deserve to be on this list if I had made it longer. Like, Arch Enemy, Amanarthe, Delain, and Lacuna Coil. This year saw releases from Dutch bands Within Temptation and Epica. German band Xandria released their first album with new singer Dianne. Former singer of Nightwish, Anette Olzon released her first solo album, and of course the British boys Ed Sheeran and One Direction both came out with their albums by the end of the year too. It’s really difficult to say who would come in first place and be at the bottom. I’m just happy that I actually listened to all of them all the way through and kept listening to them. I do know I got more into Epica this year after discovering them last year, Within Temptation and Xandria are still the same on my music scale–right at the middle–I’m really proud of Anette Olzon and how far she’s come as a person and an artist too. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t in the mood for either Ed or 1D but after liking different singles of theirs, my denial slowly faded.
I am adding on to this, because I can’t forget five very powerful females that have changed my musical taste a bit. Just before the summer, I got into two of these ladies at the same time. British singer Laurel and American singer Zella Day were the start of the long road of discovering every shred of indie/singer-songwriter music I can find! I found Laurel on an episode of The Vampire Diaries, which they are pretty known of doing that to me from time to time. I found Zella on accident while looking up on the different playlists on Spotify. I heard things about the last singer, Banks in the middle of May but I don’t think she was “cool” enough at the time, and that makes me look like shit right now! She slowly made her way into my heart though after I kept hearing her song “Before I Met You” on a commercial for a TV show. Her music is so unique and gorgeous! After Banks, I got into the group London Grammar and they are awesome! Lastly, I got into another British singer by the name of Phildel. She actually follows me on Twitter too!
Spotify has been advertising that you can discover what was your most played song or stuff like that since December started, I looked up mine and it said that Lana Del Rey’s “Dark Paradise” was the most played of this year, which sounds about right. I think I listened to it and “Off To The Races” close to a hundred or more times. There are at least 3 albums I am very anxious to hearing next year, RED, Nightwish and Fireflight. All three will probably be out within the same week I’m taking a guess right now! So far that’s all I’m excited for as music goes, but I know there will be more discover and enjoy as the new year goes on!
What were you listening in 2014?
Got Meghan's Blog 