Staff Picks: Albums We Listened To In 2014 | Page 2 of 6

headphones

Legend

Twas a weird year for me, as far as music is concerned. As much of a fan of it I still am, I realized I might not as big a fan as I once was and/or thought I was. My interests shifted this year. I felt like I rather indulge on a TV show than listen to an album. I started paying attention to sports more. When things struggled on the music end, I took the JAY Z “buy my old albums” approach and went back and listened to old stuff I was familiar with. So old, it went back to The Isley Brothers, Stevie Wonder The Gap Band and the such. I listened to more 2pac and Scarface. Usher and Keith Sweat. Nas & Dr. Dre. The more I listened to old shit, the more I wanted to stay there.

I was also in a transition period as far as how I consume music. I started paying for Spotify. My go-to place to listen to songs was my Soundcloud likes rather than my own computer or singles I uploaded to my phone. By the second half of the year, I wasn’t even adding songs to my phone because it had become such a tedious task that took forever. A simple “like” on Soundcloud was way easier to keep track of than editing id3 tags and uploading singles to my phone. So if the single wasn’t available on SC for release, chances are I probably didn’t listen to it. That’s probably why my genre listening was skewed towards more alternative singles, because they all live there. New bands like Honne, Oh Wonder and All We Are got crazy burn on there.

With all those factors, plus the fact I was watching more NBA basketball, Barclays Premier League soccer, football and keeping up with Victoria’s Secret models, music really took a backseat. It didn’t even take long to pick my albums. I think I might have been listening to more singles than albums.

Maybe it changes next year. Maybe it gets worse. Either way, there’s no wrong answer.