Boyhood
Directed by Richard Linklater
2014
Nobody had tried this before: Linklater filmed the same cast a few days a year for twelve years, so you watch a real child turn into a real adult.
★ 8.5
Browse by time · year
2014
Showing 94 works across all media from 2014
Whiplash
Directed by Damien Chazelle
2014
Shot in nineteen days on three million dollars, and cut like a thriller: a drummer, a teacher who throws chairs, and the question of what greatness costs.
★ 8.0
Blank Space
2014 · From 1989
Swift plays her own tabloid caricature, a clicking pen for percussion, and she replaced herself at number one.
★ 7.5
Uptown Funk
2014
Six studios, eighty-two takes at the guitar part, Ronson collapsing in the studio, and fourteen weeks at number one.
★ 7.5
Chandelier
2014
Written first for Rihanna, kept by Sia instead, and given a video where an eleven-year-old dancer did the acting.
★ 7.4
Two Weeks (FKA Twigs)
2014
Emile Haynie and Arca build a slow cathedral of bass, and Twigs sings desire in a whisper.
★ 6.5
Seasons (Waiting on You)
2014
One Letterman performance in March 2014, Herring's angular dancing, and Pitchfork, NME and Spin named it the year's best.
★ 6.5
i
2014 · From To Pimp a Butterfly
Rahki built it on the Isley Brothers' That Lady, and Lamar turned self-love into two Grammys.
★ 6.4
Step
2014 · From Modern Vampires of the City
Rostam's harpsichord reharmonizes a melody that traveled from Bread through Grover Washington Jr. to Souls of Mischief, then here.
★ 6.2
Shake it Off
2014 · From 1989
Martin and Shellback stomped the drum pattern on a wooden floor, and Swift turned tabloid noise into fifty weeks charting.
★ 6.2
Thinking Out Loud
2014
Wadge was playing chords while Sheeran showered; twenty minutes later they had a Song of the Year.
★ 6.0
Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)
2014 · From Run the Jewels 2
El-P's beat, de la Rocha recruited a day after a chance encounter, and the fiercest track on the album.
★ 6.0
West Coast
2014
Verses at 123 beats a minute collapsing to 65 in the chorus, cut live with Auerbach's band in Nashville.
★ 5.9
Red Eyes
2014 · From Lost in the Dream
Granduciel spent two years second-guessing these sessions, and the song still turns on one yelp before the chorus.
★ 5.8
1989
2014
Swift named the record for the year she was born and dropped country entirely, writing straight synth-pop for the first time.
★ 5.8
Queen
2014
Adrian Utley of Portishead helped build the noise, and Hadreas answers a lifetime of stares with pure swagger.
★ 5.7
Lost in the Dream
2014
Adam Granduciel spent two years and a dozen studios on it, mostly rerecording parts he had already finished, in the grip of severe anxiety.
★ 5.7
Archie, Marry Me
2014
Snowed into a Prince Edward Island farmhouse, Rankin wrote a proposal song; VanGaalen cut it in Calgary.
★ 5.7
Run the Jewels 2
2014
They gave it away free online, as they had the first one, and Killer Mike's verse about being stopped by police arrived weeks before Ferguson.
★ 5.7
Flawless (Remix)
Beyonce and Nicki Minaj
2014
Dropped without warning on a Saturday in August, an Outkast sample underneath, Minaj arriving to claim the rap crown.
★ 5.6
0 to 100/The Catch Up
2014
Boi-1da, Vinylz and Frank Dukes built the boast; Nineteen85 and 40 flip a James Blake sample for the reckoning.
★ 5.6
Do You
2014 · From They Want My Soul
Spoon's eighth album brought in Dave Fridmann and Alex Fischel, and Daniel spends the chorus asking to be understood.
★ 5.4
Stay With Me
2014
One voice layered roughly twenty times into a choir, and a settlement that added Petty and Lynne.
★ 5.3
Brooklyn Baby
2014
Del Rey wrote it with Lou Reed in mind, then sang the Brooklyn hipster caricature straight, deadpan and unbothered.
★ 5.3
Earned It
2014
Stephan Moccio's piano under strings that swing in six-eight, and Tesfaye's first Hot 100 top five.
★ 5.2
Redeployment
2014 · 304 pages
Twelve narrators tell their own Iraq, from a Marine who shot dogs in the street to a diplomat ordered to teach Iraqi children baseball. Klay is sharpest on coming home.
★ 5.0
The Zone of Interest
2014 · 306 pages
At Auschwitz a Nazi officer courts the commandant's wife while the commandant, a preening drunk, complains about his workload. The third narrator is a Jewish prisoner made to burn the bodies.
★ 5.0
Problem
2014
A saxophone loop, Big Sean whispering the hook uncredited, and Max Martin's team handing Grande her first pop blockbuster.
★ 5.0
Morning Phase
2014
Beck's father wrote the string arrangements, as he had on Sea Change. It won Album of the Year and Kanye West objected onstage.
★ 5.0
Men Explain Things to Me
2014 · 176 pages
At an Aspen party a man lectures Solnit about an important new book on the photographer Muybridge. She wrote it. Her essays track how silencing women shades into violence against them.
★ 4.9
Age of Ambition
2014 · 403 pages
Osnos spent eight years watching China chase fortune faster than its politics allowed, and tells it through a soldier who swam the strait to defect and a blind lawyer who escaped house arrest.
★ 4.8
Boom Clap
2014
Charli offered it to Hilary Duff, whose team passed; a film soundtrack turned that chorus into a top-ten smash.
★ 4.7
Tuesday
iLoveMakonnen and Drake
2014
Sonny Digital and Metro Boomin built the beat, Drake jumped on the remix, and a weeknight became an occasion.
★ 4.7
Move that Dope
2014
P-Nasty and Mike Will Made It's beat, verses from Pharrell and Pusha T, the hardest thing on Honest.
★ 4.7
I'm Not the Only One
2014
Smith and Jimmy Napes wrote it about someone else's marriage, and Simon Hale's strings carry the slow march.
★ 4.6
Don't Tell 'Em
2014
DJ Mustard and Mick Schultz built it on Snap!'s Rhythm Is a Dancer; Jeremih, by his account, skipped the video.
★ 4.6
Tough Love
2014
Recorded low at first until BenZel pushed her up an octave, and the falsetto turned touring loneliness into something weightless.
★ 4.6
Rather Be
2014
Chatto's cello and a chiptune blip riding house four-four, with Jess Glynne's first number one on top.
★ 4.6
Love Me Harder
2014
Max Martin's Stockholm crew wrote it, The Weeknd found the demo generic, and rewrote himself into his first top ten.
★ 4.5
2 On
Tinashe and ScHoolboy Q
2014
Mustard's beat interpolates Sean Paul, ScHoolboy Q scuffs the gloss, and the Aquarius lead single went four times platinum.
★ 4.4
Busy Earnin'
2014
Two Shepherd's Bush friends hiding behind the initials J and T, falsetto stacked over a warehouse full of dancers.
★ 4.3
Fancy
2014
Director X restaged Clueless for the video, and Charli XCX's hook carried both artists to seven weeks at number one.
★ 4.0
Benji
2014
Mark Kozelek uses real names throughout, and the deaths in it are real deaths in his family. Almost nothing is dressed up as metaphor.
★ 4.0
In many a piece of music, it's the pause or the rest that gives the piece its beauty and its shape.
The Art of Stillness · 2014