The 15 Best Americana Albums of 2014
If forced to define Americana, it’s the one genre where honest craftsmanship is required, respected, and rewarded, something the best of 2014 lived up to.
Best Music of 2014
The Best Country Music of 2014
Take more than a quick glance at country music in 2014 and you'll see a varied landscape -- in terms of gender, age, experience and song content.
The Best K-pop of 2014
Due to current events, 2014 was largely a rough year for K-pop. Still, these 15 songs represent the best K-pop had to offer this year, both inside and outside the mainstream.
The 20 Best New Musical Artists of 2014
There was no shortage of new and exciting music in 2014. From an avant-garde saxophone quartet to soul-inflected pop, these artists gave us great music.
The Best World Music of 2014
The best world music albums of 2014 often possessed some element of exaggeration or extremeness that seemed too unlikely to be fully true, and made you listen to them again and again.
The Best Avant-Garde and Experimental Albums of 2014
With new albums from icons like Swans, the continued proliferation of vaporwave, and a bevy of exciting new acts, 2014 has been a wonderful year for experimental and avant-garde music.
The Best Electronic Music of 2014
The most compelling electronic music of 2014 could be found in thoughtful experimentation and dancefloor-ready fun. But the ones who led the way tended to be pioneers who made their reputations doing just that.
The Best Norteño and Banda Music of 2014
Beware: what follows may contain tubas. Also accordions, clarinets, canned gunfire, protest songs, dance songs, songs about roosters, songs about drug cartels, songs using drug cartels as metaphors to make the singers seem intimidating and/or awesome and/or "authentic", songs using roosters the same way, and amor.
The Best Hip-Hop of 2014
This year's push of stylistic diversity, craft, and experimentation adds fuel to hip-hop's movement into the future.
The Best Emo Albums of 2014
Like emo's first wave, today's revival has taken issue with the category itself. But concerns over labels shouldn't get in the way of appreciating the connections between the subgenre's up-and-comers and legacy acts that reconvened like Y2K never happened.
The Best Dance Singles of 2014
Like a gluttonous monarch with a taste for domination, electronic dance music continued to saturate the airwaves and feast upon the U.S. charts in 2014.
The Top 10 Overlooked Albums of 2014
The finest of the unsung in 2014 remind us of the power of experimentation and tradition, energy and intricacy, discovery and getting lost.