My 50 Favorite Albums of 2014 1. Lily Allen — Sheezus (Parlophone) Pazz & Jop points: 16 Between her abrupt hiatus, the controversy surrounding her comeback single Hard Out Here, and the supposedly anti-feminist interview she gave earlier this year, Sheezus was almost destined to be a disaster, and the albums disappointing reviews didnt help things. After all, the album uses autotune, while Lilys lyrics range from talking about her marriage, name-dropping other female celebrities, and attacking bloggers. What happened to our anti-pop heroine? Well, shes gotten better, thats what happened. The autotune is used sparingly and effectively, the marriage songs are sweet and loving, her name-drops are praises as opposed to attacks, and I think its about time that snooty WordPress bloggers get their due. Sheezus is the perfect Lily Allen album, a record where she says, Im ready for all the comparisons/I think its dumb and its embarrassing, thereby predicting the negative reactions of music critics, setting up a trap that they inevitably fell into. But Im kind of glad that the album was panned, as it gave me something to feel passionate about in a year where it was so easy to feel ambivalent about everything happening in music. There was no Uncluded for me to call the greatest album of the decade, no Call Me Maybe for me to rightly predict as the best single of the year, but there was Sheezus, an album that I could debate with people for hours about. Stephen Thomas Erlewine recently told me, Youre the only person I know who likes that album. Maybe so, and Im not upset about that. In perhaps the worst year in music in the still young 21st century, Sheezus felt worth fighting for, even if she never gets that crown.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 20:54:12 +0000