I've been putting this off until year's end, just trying to be fair and include everything that deserves to be on one of these lists. But now that

just put his list out, I suppose there's no time like the present.

 

The rules? Either the song came out in 2014, or I first heard it in 2014. Simple enough. From there, it's all a matter of quality. There are a few songs that surprised me this year, and that goes for both lists. There are also a couple that made the worst list simply for how hard they crushed my soul and made me wish I were living in any other decade. With that in mind, let's start the alternating madness with:

 

#10 WORST: HUMAN - CHRISTINA PERRI

Congrats, Christy (Christi?), you made a good breakup song a few years ago that I continue to call a guilty pleasure. If you wish to maintain relevancy, you're going to have to step up your game. Human is not that. You are going back to your old game, but stripping it of whatever I originally liked about it to begin with. Human is caught in the awkward spot of being too similar to Jar of Hearts to have any identity of its own, and yet being a lazily-made "woe is me" song that completely lacks the raw anger and borderline misanthropy that made Jar of Hearts bearable to begin with. The result is something that most of the songs on the worstie list suffer from: It is incredibly annoying. Perri's shrill vocals do not go well with the slower instrumental backing, and she keeps trying to shoot for both a higher pitch and a higher tempo that simply don't exist. I seriously thought she could sing four years ago. What the hell went wrong?

 

#10 BEST: HAPPY - PHARRELL WILLIAMS

I feel I need to put this on the list mainly because it was the first song I heard all year that I actually liked. Sure, it's repetitive, but the whole thing is just so upbeat and cheerful that you can't help but feel it lives up to its name. It's a smooth, satisfying earworm that deserves every bit of the... modest reception it's received. Am I setting the bar low by putting this on the list? Perhaps. But consider for a second the fact that I couldn't think of a 10th song better than this. Two songs by Ariana Grande came close, but those were really just... average. That should tell you something about the era we live in.

 

#9 WORST: FANCY: IGGY AZALEA FT. CHARLIE XCX

I swear they're doing this on purpose. After all I complain about terrible vocals and boring beats in modern pop music, some A-hole record exec decides to brew the perfect storm just to piss me off. How about a chorus sung by an obnoxious Cockney layered over a musical backing of "doo doo doo, do do," just to punctuate a cliche-storm rap performed by Mrs. Crocodile Dundee trying to impersonate a black chick. It's not even an insult. I'm too proud to let something like this get under my skin. Or... at least I would be, had this insult not shot to the top of the charts like a rabbit on coke. Then, I reserve the right to feel just a little bit offended. Just a little.

 

#9 BEST: AM I WRONG - NICO & VINZ

Oh, come on. You know why this is on here. You can't get it out of your head, either. That booming, infectious chorus won't even let you sleep at night. That primal, sinfully good backing track compliments everything so smoothly. This is just a well-produced, well sung song, and it needs no better reason to make the list of the best songs of 2014.

 

#8 WORST: ALL ABOUT THAT BASS - MEGHAN TRAINOR

I feel betrayed. If there was one good thing about 2013, it was that throwback music was becoming a big thing. 70s throwbacks dominated the charts to the point that Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines stayed at #1 so long that it surpassed Eminem's Lose Yourself. Just think about what a massive achievement that is. Love it or hate it, Blurred Lines, along with Daft Punk's Get Lucky, Capital Cities' Safe and Sound, and Bruno Mars' Treasure all succeeded in proving definitively that there really is a market for throwback music in this day and age. And so, I got hyped. Me being an oldies fan, I prayed and hoped for a grand golden age throwback that would surpass them all. I wanted the old school sock hops to come back to life with a bang. I wanted a modern day Rockin' Robin.

 

Instead, I got this. An overproduced, trashily-sung "throwback" to my favorite era of music, that's (of course) focused on extoling the virtues of having a big ass. It's so wrong it's insulting. I'm flabbergasted by just how much they were able to fuck up about the era they were trying to emulate with this supposed "throwback." Remember how Treasure emulated 70s disco so accurately that it almost felt uncanny? AATB just puts a backing track in there with some clapping, and that's the extent of the throwback quality. You know, because 50s songs had clapping in them.

 

They screwed up the vocals, they screwed up the audio levels, they screwed up the instrumental, and they even screwed up the themes (those mostly being various metaphors for boy+girl=love, and not hard at all to emulate), but fret not, they got the clapping. It's mixed like absolute shit, and sounds like it was recorded a mile away from the mic, but they still got the damn clapping. According to this song, that was the entire identity of the era.

 

And now, this song has separated everybody into two camps: Those who love it, and think that this was really what music sounded like back in the golden age, and those that hate it, and want throwbacks to go away because of it. And yes, there is certainly overlap in this Venn diagram. Thanks, Meghan Trainor. You just split the entire internet right down the middle, and I hate both sides equally as much. Well done.

 

#8 BEST: COME WITH ME NOW - KONGAS

I need something positive after that rant. How's about a loud, in your face bit of hard rock with an accordion as its centerpiece? Yeahp, not much more I can say about that. I mean, it's a rock song with an accordion in it! What else needs to be said?

 

#7 WORST: BIRTHDAY - KATY PERRY

I used to defend you, Katy. I was your biggest fan. Now, not only do you slap me in the face with the entirety of your 2013 portfolio, but then you rip off the music from Last Friday Night and slap it in some piecemeal, hacked together frankensong that exists entirely as a metaphor for how much you love the D.

 

No, Katy Perry. As much as you apparently want it, this song is not worthy of a D. Not even a D-.

 

#7 BEST: BURN - ELLIE GOULDING

Loosely related to the subject of throwbacks, if there's one genre that did extraordinarily well in its modernization, it's synthpop. I'm as surprised as most people that this 80s staple is still going strong today, but if Burn is any indication, then it's not without reason. We've still got more than a few energetic, upbeat party songs left in us. And if they're anything like this, with it's siren song vocals and breakneck tempo, then we're in for a treat.

 

#6 WORST: WIGGLE - JASON DERULLO

Hey, everybody! Let's all laugh at Jason Derullo! Just look at this dunce! He made yet another crappy butt song, and put the entire beat on a recorder! Laugh, my pretties! I command you! LAUGH! I mean, after all, when has Jason Derullo ever done anything ri-

 

#6 BEST: TALK DIRTY - JASON DERULLO

-ight?

 

I... uh... I can explain.

 

Talk Dirty is a song about fornicating around the globe. At least, that's what it sounds like at first. JD loves to brag about how "he" can literally go anywhere in the world, talk to any girl he sees, and instantly get laid. How? Well, that's where it starts getting weird. Some of the locations he mentions are popular tourist attractions (New York, London, Rio), but it quickly takes a turn for the worse when he mentions he scores in Haiti and Taiwan. He then brags about being (of all things) monolingual. While we're all busy moaning about we can't understand women, Jason here literally doesn't understand a single word his bedmates are saying, and presumably can't remember the names of the various Gods they call out to. Hell, he's so proud of this fact that he even references the fact that conversation length isn't nearly as important as the length of... another thing.

 

To cut to the chase: This song is a joke. Seriously, it's a joke. And a damn good one, too. The jabs against modern musical cliches (especially those relating to sex) just keep getting more explicit and more immature, until it all eventually climaxes in a 2Chainz rap about "International Oral." It becomes quickly apparent that Derullo's character is such a massive douchebag that the only reason he's able to get any at all is because he's so rich and the girls can't understand a word he's saying. I can't even begin to list all the hilarious ways this pokes fun at modern day hip hop and R&B. And it's all backed up by the funkiest sax beat this side of George Michael.

 

So yeah... Jason Derullo actually did something right for once.