Welcome back to The Music of My Life, where I feature ten songs from each year of my life. In most cases, the ten songs I choose will be ones I like personally (unless I explain otherwise). The songs will be selected from Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100 Chart, Acclaimed Music, and will all be released in the featured year.
As you might remember, I started this last May on my birthday. I have tried to work a week or two ahead on this feature. One thing I have noticed as we move into the late 2010’s and 2020’s is that there are not that many songs that mean anything to me. No life event connects with them. There are only a few I may like. That being said, it is very possible that I will combine two or three years into one week. I also have a feeling that there may be upcoming years where I don’t pick any songs. If that happens, the feature will wrap sooner than expected, which may be a good thing.
2014 was actually a good year of music for me. I turned 44 that year. I had a new career in sleep and was still able to do a few hours on the radio. Many of the songs from this year were ones I played on the air …
It didn’t mean much to me in 2014, but Let It Go by Idina Menzel sure does today. It is the first song I danced to with my daughter at our first Daddy/Daughter Dance. That may have been the only song we danced to that first year, but I will never forget it. It is from her favorite movie, Frozen.
“Kids don’t want to stand out all the time, they want to fit in,” Menzel said regarding this song. “It’s about finding that thing that makes you different that’s going to make you special and extraordinary.”
Let It Go won for Best Song at the Oscars in the 2014 ceremony. It also earned an entry in the 2016 Guinness World Records book for “Most Languages Featured on a Single.” It was recorded in 42 different languages for Frozen‘s foreign releases.
Let It Go
Paramore was primarily known for their rock music. Ain’t It Fun is a very different sound for them. It was more pop/dance than rock. (From songfacts) Bassist Jeremy Davis told The Guardian that the band had their largely teenage fan base in mind. “After we started writing weird stuff like ‘Ain’t It Fun,’ we got nervous,” he said. “But that was a comfort. We’ve grown and we don’t like the same music we liked, so why would [our fans] not? That idea kept us pushing ourselves.”
Songfacts also says, “This upbeat track mixes gospel, soul and some Prince-style R&B. Hayley Williams told The Sun: “Taylor (York) and I came up with the melody and I thought about Prince, too. Then it got layered with more groove and funk and all the cool elements. The next thing I know there’s a gospel choir in the studio and we have that track. It’s been so liberating to write this record.”
The xylophone in the song really helped the song to stand out on the air. That’s what I remember most about the first time I played it. “Well, that’s certainly different,” I thought.
The song is catchy. I don’t know that I’d call it an earworm, but you get hooked right from the beginning.
Ain’t It Fun
The next song is one that I have written about before. I chose it in the 2021 Song Draft that Hanspostcard hosted. It is one of those songs that I love to listen to. Here is the blog I wrote for the Song Draft:
Love Runs Out
Who would have imagined that in 2014 a Cole Porter song would be popular? Thanks to Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, Porter’s Anything Goes was very popular … again.
The recording of the song took place over a year in New York City. Bennett’s quartet was present, as well as other musicians. It received mostly positive reviews. The Chicago Tribune said that it found Gaga to be in “good voice” and Bennett in “classic form”. V Magazine called the song a “fresh take” on the original. MTV News said “Gaga is clearly having a blast, doing her best Broadway belting with tons of energy and enthusiasm”
On the Billboard Jazz Digital Songs chart, the track debuted at the top, becoming Gaga’s second entry on that chart, following “The Lady is a Tramp”. The song was Bennett’s 15th entry on the Jazz Digital Songs chart, and his third number-one single. “Anything Goes” sold 16,000 digital downloads in the US during the week of its release.
Lady Gaga’s voice is one that could easily sing the American Song Book. The true sound of her voice is lost on current music. And how could you not like Tony Bennett?
Anything Goes
One song that really stands out to me from 2014 is Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran. It was one that many brides I DJ’d for picked as their first dance. It’s a great choice.
The first time I heard it, it reminded me a bit of Into the Mystic by Van Morrison. Little did I know that Ed says Van Morrison heavily influenced this song. He told songfacts:
“No one’s really channeled Van Morrison for a long time. Everyone always channels, Michael Jackson and the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and I feel like Van Morrison is a key figure in the music that I make.”
The video features Sheeran and his partner Brittany Cherry ballroom dancing and was shot all at once in 16 mm film. “I wanted the video to be a little different, so I opted for ballroom dancing,” he explained when the video was released in October 2014. “I had lessons for five hours a day when I was on my US tour last month.”
Songfacts says: With electronic music ruling the airwaves, this was one of the few hit songs of its time with a guitar solo (played by Chris Leonard), which is near the end of the song in place of a bridge. Running 4:41, it was also very long by 2014 hit song standards, although this extra time makes the song more appealing as a first dance wedding number.
Thinking Out Loud
When Shake It Off hit the radio, it drove me crazy. At that time, Taylor Swift was everywhere. There was a ton of publicity leading up to her 1989 album. This was the lead single.
This song IS an earworm. Even if I switched stations or turned down the monitors in the studio, I still found that it would run through my head. Gee, I don’t know why? The phrase “shake it off” shows up 36 times in this song, mostly in the chorus. “Shake” appears 70 times. URGH!
Songfacts says: The song originated from Swift learning to overcome her fear of not being accepted. “I think it kind of takes not caring what people think about you a step further to kind of locking the fact that people don’t get you,” she explained to BBC Radio 1’s Breakfast Show. “Kind of taking pride in the fact that you know you are and it honestly doesn’t matter if someone else doesn’t want to understand you. We go through these scenarios in so many different phrases of our lives, no matter what it is.”
“I’ve had to learn a pretty tough lesson in the past couple years that people can say whatever they want about at any time, and we cannot control that,” said Swift. “The only thing we can control is our reaction to that… You can either let it get to you… [or] you just shake it off.”
Shake It Off
Another big song that worked well as school dances was Shut Up and Dance by Walk The Moon. I used to love watching folks jumping around and dancing to it. It was always great to hear them shout the chorus as it played.
Vocalist Nicholas Petricca told American Songwriter magazine the story of the song:
“Well, (Guitarist) Eli Maiman and I were working on something that’s now the verse. And it had this great feeling that we couldn’t stop playing over and over. We didn’t have a chorus and we didn’t have a subject or a lyric.”
“So over the next weekend, I went to this awesome party they have at The Echo in Echo Park, Los Angeles, called Funky Soul Saturday. The story of ‘Shut Up and Dance’ is based on a true story of hanging out there with my friends… this girl actually told me to shut up and dance with her. We took it back to the studio and it spun out very quickly after that.”
It was only later that Petricca realized he could use the girl’s comment as a song lyric. “At the time, I was in my head and not with it,” he said. “She’s one of my best friends and pulled me out into the moment, and that really became the subject of the song. Encouraging people to let go of whatever it is that’s bothering you and get into your body and out of your head. Coming home and working on the song I thought, this is it. This is totally it.”
Shut Up and Dance
OneRepublic makes a second appearance on the list with an amazing song – I Lived.
Songfacts says:
While opening for U2 in the summer of 2012, OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder observed the effect of Bono’s lyrics on the Irish band’s fans, as they sung along to their songs. “These lyrics are so from his gut and so like honest, but poetic,” Tedder told Radio.com. “They’re not trying to be ambiguous or trying to be cool.”
Inspired, Tedder decided that with the Native he was going to write lyrics people could relate to, which meant he would have to share a little bit of himself. Accordingly, nothing on the album is a work of fiction. This song, for instance is a love letter to the singer’s son, Copeland Cruz, who was born in 2010.
How often are we told to live life to its fullest? The chorus is an example of doing just that:
I, I did it all
I, I did it all
I owned every second that this world could give
I saw so many places
The things that I did
Yeah, with every broken bone
I swear I lived
The song’s music video pays tribute to teenage fan, Bryan Warnecke, and his struggles living with cystic fibrosis. The clip ends with Tedder driving Warnecke to a concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado to see OneReublic perform.
I Lived
Another song that jumped out of the radio at listeners was Honey, I’m Good by Andy Grammer. The song almost sounded out of place on Adult Contemporary stations because of its “country” sound. Grammer even went as far as to call the song, “a fun hoedown!”
The song’s music video features a montage of around one hundred real-life couples that have been together from several months to over 70 years. Grammer said, “My manager and I were on the phone talking about an idea for the video. We wanted to press home the concept that this isn’t a song about a guy who’s cheating. This is about a guy who is being true. So we started calling all of our friends and family that we knew had been married for a long time and asked them to lip sync the song.”
“They all started sending videos in and we started asking by word of mouth if people knew a couple who’d been married a long time. It was so fun getting all our friends and family involved that we decided to just put it up on social media and ask the fans to be part of the video too. We asked them to get their parents and grandparents to be in it also.”
Honey I’m Good
Finally, another song that just clicked with the school dance crowds, as well as adult crowds. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars struck gold with Uptown Funk.
The intro reminds me of the intro to Smoke on the Water. As it progresses, you get another instrument, then another, etc… Songfacts explains:
This intro sets the stage for the rest of the song, introducing the hooky “doh doh doh” vocal and the clapping drum sound (made with a Linn drum machine) that show up throughout the song. Before the intro ends, various other key instruments in the song appear: bass, snare drums, cheery guitar, horns and a swishy synth effect.
Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars and the producer Jeff Bhasker (Kanye West, Drake, Alicia Keys) share writing and production credits on the song. It originated from a lick that Mars and his band were playing on tour.
“When we hit on that opening line – ‘This s–t, that ice cold. Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold’ – we knew that we had the seed of this really exciting idea,” Ronson told Billboard magazine. “I pushed myself much more than I have on anything else in the past.”
Mars and Ronson create a monster party vibe in this song, starting with the title: “Uptown” implies high class, while “Funk” is the rhythm and release. The lyrics are way over-the-top, with Mars explaining that he’s so hot he’s forcing dragons into retirement. It’s clever, fun and outrageous, but also meticulously constructed with a mix of rhyming patterns.
The song went on to be the biggest of 2015.
Uptown Funk
So there you have it, 2014 in song. Did I miss one of your favorites from that year? Tell me about it in the comments.
Next week, we’ll look at 2015. My list includes the first song my wife and I ever talked about (before we were married) and one by her favorite country singer. It also includes a “tribute” to Frank Sinatra and the worst dance song since Gangnam Style! All that and more next week.
Thanks for listening and for reading!
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 