[troutman]

American Songwriter’s Top 50 Albums of 2014

http://www.americansongwriter.com/20...0-albums-2014/

1. Sturgill Simpson: Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
2014 was, undoubtedly, the year of Sturgill Simpson. The Kentucky-born singer songwriter burst on the scene seemingly out of nowhere when he released his second album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music in May, to the delight and awe of critics and fans alike. “Turtles All the Way Down” may be the first and only country song to nod to Stephen Hawking, but it’s not Simpson’s offbeat lyrics that make him such a refreshing addition to the country canon. Simpson emerged at the height of “bro country,” an overused moniker for the unfortunate wallet-chain-and-six-pack movement currently plaguing country radio, shining like the “reptile aliens made of light” he sings about in “Turtles” and earning him the honorific the “Savior of Country Music,” a title the often taciturn Simpson was more than reluctant to accept. Savior may be a pretty apt descriptor, though, as Metamodern Sounds grapples with questions of spirituality and identity, concepts typically reserved for headier genres that take on a new weight when underscored by the instrumentation of traditional, honky-tonk tinged country. Simpson may not be country music’s savior, but he is the genre’s poet laureate, bringing nuance back to a form that, especially recently, so desperately needs it.

19. Mac DeMarco: Salad Days

American Songwriter’s Top 50 Songs Of 2014

http://www.americansongwriter.com/20...50-songs-2014/