Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 2014 Part 2 (10-1)

 A genre of hip-hop that has become very mainstream as of late is drill music, with the success of Pop Smoke and other rappers making it such as Lil Durk. And drill is a style of hip-hop I enjoy a lot and am happy it is as big as it is right now. 

You know what may have opened the doors for this to happen even if it took years afterward to happen?

10. Hot N*gga - Bobby Shmurda

This is just one hell of a drill banger, with an immaculate dramatic and threatening atmosphere that Bobby Shmurda fits into perfectly and just absolutely EATS. It's a song that's all about the bombast and threatening atmosphere and it works incredibly well in doing so. But also, I actually like the lyrics. They give me a view into the brain of a gangster who sells drugs in order to survive and kills people in order to keep himself alive. And it does so incredibly well. The atmosphere and the lyrics match together incredibly well. Also it has very iconic and quotable lines like "MITCH CAUGHT A BODY 'BOUT A WEEK AGO"

You ever had a song go from the lowest tier in your tier system to the highest in the course of a month? Because I have...

9. Amnesia - 5 Seconds Of Summer

Yeah this was once one of my least favorite songs of all time, not for the same reasons most people in this community hate this song (which I'll get to) but because, this song brought back memories of one of the worst points in my life for my mental health levels. However, one day a couple months ago I listened to this song, and that didn't happen, and I continued not to have that be a problem. And then recently I realized, that I loved this song now. A lot. As I said, a lot of people in this community hate this song because of the lyrics. This is a song where 5SOS just cry about how their ex has moved on from the breakup and has a new guy meanwhile they're not over it. Sort of like Good 4 U by Olivia Rodrigo but to a more extreme, depressed degree. The singer says lines "if today I woke up with you right beside me, like all of this was some twisted dream, I'd hold you closer than I ever did before, and you'd never slip away" and of course saying that he wishes he could wake up with amnesia to forget it ever happened. And I mean, it's immature as fuck but like THEY'RE TEENAGERS. Similar to Olivia Rodrigo songs like the aforementioned Good 4 U the immaturity of the song is part of the charm of it for me. But the biggest strength of this song is just, how real it feels. The singers could hide how destroyed the breakup made them feel, but they aren't, they're just letting you into their world. And damn do they sell it with their vocals sounding absolutely HAUNTED. This works exceptionally well as a "wounded dog" song similar to Robbery by Juice WRLD and gets way more shit than it deserves if you ask me. 

Oh and speaking of that...

8. Fancy - Iggy Azalea, Charli XCX (Peak #1, Billboard YE: #4, Jan-Dec: #4)

Okay I need to tell a story. Back in 2020 when I first started listening through the 2010's Billboard Year End lists, I heard Fancy, Black Widow, and Problem when listening to the 2014 list and got the impression I think most people in this community get of Iggy Azalea, that she's a talentless, phony, spoiled brat. And even though I enjoyed Fancy despite this, I thought she was a bad artist. And I kept this impression of her for about a year.  Then in 2021, I met someone who would become a big online friend of mine, Kalameet (https://rateyourmusic.com/~KalameetGascoigne) who kept talking about how much he loved Fancy. And then he eventually listened to The New Classic (the album this song comes from) and thought it was a 10/10. I at first thought he was crazy. But then, a few months later I think, I listened to the first single from it called Work for a project, and I was blown away. It's a song where Iggy talks about how she had to immigrate here from Australia to pursue a rap career, had to get through all that, then be alone without family or money in Miami as a teenager, mopping floors just to earn her living, meanwhile trying to get herself a record deal. And how she was offered multiple deals but they were incredibly exploitative, until finally she was found by T.I. in 2012. This song completely changed my perspective on Iggy and made me very proud of her success after what she's been through. Then Kalameet asked me to listen to the 2nd single from the album, Change Your Life with T.I., and I also adored it. Then a bit later, he asked me to listen to the album, so I did. And I loved it. It was an excellent listen and that day, I became an Iggy Azalea fan. I still have not listened to any of her other projects, but The New Classic is a great album. But anyway, I love Fancy. Now, this is a pretty unpopular opinion in this community as so many people still have the same impression of Iggy that I did at first, and I mean I get why you would get that impression of her off of this song, her other lead artist hit from 2014, Black Widow, and her verse on Problem. But, while yes I see why she might come across as a spoiled brat in this song to some people, I honestly don't get bothered by them at all, it's just a brag rap tune why you taking it so seriously. Another reason why people hate it is that Iggy, who is does not have autism, says "retarded" in one of her verses, which is a slur against autistic people. As someone who is autistic myself (so don't get mad at me for saying the word here since I can reclaim it), I honestly am not that bothered by it, but I totally understand being bothered by it. But anyway, Iggy just oozes charisma in her verses with a ton of swagger, I love the beat, and Charli XCX delivers one of the best and catchiest hooks of the year. That's all I really have to say about Fancy itself, but this segment went long anyway so that's fine. 

As I have said before on this blog, one of my favorite albums of all time is I Can Feel You Forgetting Me by Neon Trees, an indie rock album that not only has incredible grooves and catchy hooks it's also about how the lead singer, Tyler Glenn, takes drugs to try and help himself move on from a breakup but it doesn't help and just gets him addicted to a toxic substance, and now he has to deal with that in addition to the breakup. It's an absolute gut punch of an album that I cannot recommend enough. Now as much as I would want it to, that album did not have any crossover success onto the main hot 100. But at least, several years earlier, we got a massive hit with a similar topic. And it was awesome!

7. Habits (Stay High) - Tove Lo (Peak #3, Billboard YE: #32, Jan-Dec: #21)

Yeah this song works so well for basically the same reasons lyrically as most of I Can Feel You Forgetting Me, Tove Lo has a breakup, she takes drugs to try and help her get over it, and she builds herself an addiction. It conveys the feeling of someone who knows that she needs to quit her addiction but she doesn't know how and combined with the bleak atmosphere and just how depressed Tove Lo sounds in her performance it creates an absolutely haunting listen, in the best way. Even with how catchy the hook in this song is, I'm honestly amazed this song was as big a hit as it was, and that radio played this song a lot. But I'm not complaining because this song is phenomenal. 

Do you all remember Play That Song by Train? Was a pretty decently sized hit in 2017 that was pretty close to making the year end list, that is one of my least favorite songs of all time for personal reasons I will likely get into another time but not now. But as much as I loathe it, that kind of concept could've worked with better execution if you ask me. Case in point...

6. Play It Again - Luke Bryan (Peak #14, Billboard YE: #64, Jan-Dec: #64)

Yeah a bro country song almost made my top 5 of this list. And in a weaker year it absolutely would have. But yeah, as someone who likes Luke Bryan a fair amount and has listened to a few of his albums, it's my favorite song I've heard from him, and close to my favorite bro country song to make a Billboard Year End list. Basically this song is about how Luke meets this girl at a tailgate, they talk, he falls in love, and then suddenly the girl's favorite song comes on and they start dancing and have the time of their lives. But then it ends and Luke wishes that they would play the song again so she wouldn't stop dancing and this moment could continue. But they don't, that night. But then they're sitting out under the stars another day and the same song comes on, and they dance again. This just works very well in a similar way to a song like Best Song Ever by One Direction or Shut Up And Dance by Walk The Moon, but with a better performance than Best Song Ever (and remember I love that song, made my best of 2013 list) and much more overplay resistant and just not as overplayed in general as Shut Up And Dance, which is why I like it more than both songs. Luke Bryan just absolutely sells how beautiful this girl is and how magical dancing with her to her favorite song feels to him, with the best performance I have ever heard from him. Also I just adore the glittery, magical feeling instrumental it just adds to the magic of this song for me. 

2014 continued the big success of EDM from 2013, with not only Wake Me Up carrying over into the year but also several other big hits. And most of it was good to amazing, like...

5. Rather Be - Clean Bandit, Jess Glynne

Rather Be by Clean Bandit and Jess Glynne. An EDM/Pop song that is one of the most beloved hit songs of the entire 2010s in this community, widely agreed to be pop perfection. And it's a song I've never been crazy about. Don't get me wrong it's a pretty solid pop song, but I have never been a part of the massive hype around it. But if you want an EDM/Pop song that I think is pop perfection from 2014...

5. Stay The Night - Zedd, Hayley Williams (Peak: #18, Billboard YE: #94, Jan-Dec: N/A)

I've praised Zedd before on this blog, saying that at his worst he still makes decent production, and at his best he is capable of making some of the best EDM I've ever heard in my life. This song, along with his big 2013 hit Clarity and his big hit that was snubbed hard by Billboard in 2015, Beautiful Now with Jon Bellion (this song was a bigger hit than Billboard would tell you in 2015, change my mind), is an example of that. This song is just so stunning on a musical level that I'm just kinda lost on words to describe it with. So I guess I'll just hand it over to the biggest fan of it I know, my friend Kalameet Gascoigne who is the one who turned me on to this song in the first place. 

Kalameet: As Urtar said, I’m probably the biggest fan of this song I’ve ever encountered, and I consider it my personal favorite song ever made. Simply put, this is the most stunning sounding song I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing. Hayley Williams, despite being a pop-punk singer at her core, was undeniably the best possible choice for the vocals on this song. She sounds marvelous, but unlike a good deal of early 2010s - style EDM (and I say this as a massive fan of most of it), she holds her own personality FAR more than many other singers of the time. But that’s to say nothing of the production, undoubtedly the best of Zedd’s career. The main piano line throughout is gorgeous enough on its own, but when the electronic elements come in for the chorus + drop, nothing can even compare. Although arguably the best moment of the song comes just before the final drop, where every musical element drops out after the awe-inspiring build, the title line is said in echoey silence with a triumphant clap right before it all comes crashing back in…. fucking breathtaking stuff. The lyrics are equally excellent, detailing a relationship on the brink of loss so one begs the other for just one more night of closeness and bonding out of pure fear of losing them. I can’t relate to it in the literal sense, but the lyrics do strike a very important note with me regardless… but that’s a little too personal for someone else’s list. All in all, this song and my love for it have shaped me in ways I may never be able to properly articulate. But I hope I made at least a few people reconsider its brilliance, and I thank Urtar for giving me the platform to do so.

Urtar: Thanks for coming on Kalameet! I agree with almost all of what you said, aside from not really having any personal attachment to it, and it not being my favorite song of all time. But yeah absolutely stunning song and absolutely deserving of it's high spot on my list. 

One of the biggest breakout stars of 2014 in the US (after having some earlier success in the UK)  was Sam Smith, who had one of the absolute biggest hits of the year with Stay With Me, as well as another hit as a lead artist late in the year, I'm Not The Only One. And while I enjoy both of those songs a lot, the two songs by EDM producers that helped him break through to the US before Stay With Me, are the ones that I truly adore. So I'm gonna talk about both here, starting with the one I adore less although it's still something special. 

4a. Latch - Disclosure, Sam Smith (Peak: #7, Billboard YE: #28, Jan-Dec: #25)

This is just an absolutely beautiful piece of EDM music. The absolutely heavenly, glittery synths just sound transcendent, Sam Smith sounds angelic, the hook is absolutely phenomenal. And the atmosphere perfectly conveys the feeling of two people coming together conveyed in the lyrics. That said, this is the lesser of these two songs and would have probably only been #6 or #7 if I didn't do a tie. 

4b. La La La - Naughty Boy, Sam Smith (Peak #19, Billboard YE: #82, Jan-Dec: #86)

There was a time where this would have, no joke, topped this list. It's cooled on me a bit since then, but it's still one hell of a single. Firstly, the production is absolutely stunning, feeling sublime and heavenly in a way that few songs can replicate for me, similar to Paradise by Coldplay. Sam Smith's vocals fit the heavenly atmosphere absolutely perfectly, and also sound heavenly. Even with songs like Diamonds and Too Good At Goodbyes in their repertoire, this is the best performance I have ever heard from them. I know some people hate the baby noises in the hook, but I also love them. They capture the feeling of the song perfectly. But beyond just the sound, I kinda have a personal attachment with this song. Basically, this is a song about covering your ears and going la la la to drown out the world when you're sick of all this pointless conversation. I am a very shy, introvert, with autism who is socially awkward and really gets sick of hearing conversation, espicially about things I'm not passionate about. When I'm feeling sick of all this noise, this is a song that I turn to and it really just helps me drown out the world. This song was one of my most streamed at the start of the school year when I first returned to in person school after years of distance learning, and while I have not listened to it as much these days as I've gotten much more used to in-person school again, it's still there whenever I need it as one of my favorite hits of the entire 2010s. 

So you know how I said one of my least favorite songs on Taylor Swift's album 1989 was pushed as the lead single from it and was a hit in 2014 and was still good enough to make part 1 of this list? Well, it just so happened that one of my favorite songs on that album was pushed as the 2nd single and was also a 2014 hit...

3. Blank Space - Taylor Swift (Peak #1, Billboard YE: N/A, Jan-Dec: #49)

This is my favorite single from 1989 (not my favorite song on it period, that's Clean, seriously go listen to that song now it is so worth it). I love Style as much as the next guy, and there was a time I preferred it to Blank Space, but these days for me Blank Space shines even brighter. This is a song where Taylor plays into the rumors about her, satirically playing them out, showing herself as a villain who moves from guy to guy, breaking their hearts and moving on to her next victim. And she does this all with the self awareness to let you know that it's all satire, to show off how ridiculous those rumors are. And she does this all effortlessly. Combine that with some phenomenal 80's snythpop production, incredible vocals from Taylor and one of the catchiest pop hooks of the entire 2010s and you have one hell of a pop song, and one of my favorite hit songs of the entire 2010s. The only reason it didn't make my top 2 is competition. 

You ever went from thinking a song was overrated to considering it one of your favorite pop songs of all time in the course of a year?

2. Boom Clap - Charli XCX (Peak: #8, Billboard YE: #34, Jan-Dec: #33)

I do not say this lightly, but Boom Clap by Charli XCX is absolute pop perfection. The incredibly sparkly, yet bombastic production that fits the rest of the song perfectly, Charli's immaculate vocals, where she sounds incredibly awestruck by this guy, and one of the catchiest pop hooks of the century. This song is just an incredibly happy and upbeat pop song, that is a massive comfort song for me because it makes me feel optimistic, like everything is gonna go great in my life, and it has just gotten me thru so much shit since I fell in love with it. It's absolutely one of my favorite songs ever, and yet there was one song on this Year End list that I liked more.

So if you remember, when I talked about Play It Again, I said that it was close to my favorite bro country song to become a hot 100 hit. I didn't say it was, because a bro country song from 2014 was my favorite hit of the year. And no I am not joking. 

1. Drunk On A Plane - Dierks Bentley (Peak: #27, Billboard YE: #79, Jan-Dec: #83)

Yes I put this song, that I have never seen anyone else put even remotely near a best list, at #1 on my list. This is a song where the narrator is about to get married, and buys plane tickets for a two person trip to Cancun for the honeymoon, but he gets rejected at the wedding. And he can't get a refund on the tickets, so he has to take the trip to Cancun by himself, and you can just hear the crushing disappointment in his voice, how much he was looking forward to this trip with his bride to be, and then all the times they would have together in the future, and now he has to take the trip by himself. But then he regains his composure and says "so hey, I'm getting drunk on a plane" and starts a plane wide party by buying drinks for everyone but the pilot. He does this both to try and make the best of a bad situation but also to try and drown out his pain. And the song on a musical level captures the feeling of a party on a plane perfectly with the guitars and drums that just sound like a flying plane, especially the incredible guitar solo. And Dierks Bentley sells every emotion in the song incredibly well, and also just sounds great in general. But yeah, this would have gotten this onto the list fairly high, but not this high. This song just speaks to me. I have always been someone who hates doing things I don't enjoy and as a kid I would complain and whine about doing chores and stuff like that. But as I have gotten older I have tried to do that a lot less and do more "trying to make the best of a bad situation". And this song is an anthem to that. This song is an anthem to the way I want to live my life as an adult and as a result it has become one of my favorite songs of all time. All of this would have given this song a shot at taking the top spot on this list, but what really sealed this song as my #1 of the year in my head was a bit of a story. A month or two ago, my family went on a trip to Vegas, and we took a plane there. I've always been terrified of airplanes because I have a massive fear of falling and when I'm on a plane I can't stop worrying about the possibility of our plane losing energy and us falling down and dying. On that trip, Drunk On A Plane came on when I was shuffling my playlist trying to drown out my fears, and suddenly, this song convinced me to stop worrying about the plane crashing and just try to make the best of this plane trip, looking down at the land below and how cool it looks from inside of a plane rather than worrying about us falling. I listened to this song on repeat for literally the entire rest of the flight. This song helped me escape one of my biggest fears and also just speaks to the way I want to try and live my life as an adult, and I am so happy it has come into my life. Drunk On A Plane by Dierks Bentley. The best hit song of 2014. 

Thanks for reading this list! Urtar Reviews signing out! I'll see you next time!