Now that 2014 is over, we can look at the top 40 songs of the year. The list from which I will be discussing this topic will be the official most streamed list complied by Official Charts Company. Looking at the Top 5, I see three songs that I definitely dig – Happy by Pharrell, All of Me by John Legend, and Stay With Me by Sam Smith. These songs were a big part of the soundtrack to the past year. The great thing about these songs is that I would describe the people who sing them as genuinely talented people, unlike the people who sing some of the songs a bit further down on this list (read: Iggy Azalea).
One of the things I like to do with lists like these is look at the singers/performers, and see which ones I think no one will remember in 10 years, like the group O Town or 3LW 10 years ago. in this age of short attention spans and blink-and-you-miss-them fads, my gut tells me that several people on the Top 40 list fall into this category. I’m going to guess that on of them will be Meghan Trainor. Though I’m not a fan of Iggy Azalea, I think people will still know who she is in ten years, because she will probably be on one of those celebrity reality shows like Big Brother or The Surreal Life.
One singer who really came out big this year was Ariana Grande. Though her music too is representative of the times – highly produced (some would say over produced) and often very electronic – she seems also to be a genuinely talented singer. She is also everywhere right now, on all kinds of talk shows and public public performances, so she is obviously willing to put in the work to transcend many singers who will find themselves being just another fad.