My Favourite Album of 2014!

My dear friend Joe nominated me to do this blog (Check out his blog!), and even though I hate him for putting me through the agony of picking my favourite album of 2014, I think it is such a good idea! Well done Joe 😉

The reason why I said it was agony of picking my favourite album is because this year has been an incredible year for some musicians, producing some top quality albums.  2014 was the year for newcomers and these newcomers certainly put their stamp on the music world. Sam Smith, who was announced the winner of the Brits 2014 Critics’ Choice award for 2014, released his debut album ‘In The Lonely Hour’ in May this year. ‘Lay Me Down’ is my favourite track on his album. Ariana Grande’s second studio album ‘My Everything’ came out in August and established Ariana as a major force in the music industry. Without a doubt, ‘Just A Little Bit Of Your Heart’ is my favourite song , which was penned by One Direction’s Harry Styles. It’s been two years since Ella Henderson appeared on the UK X Factor and many critics had questioned if the two year gap would be a good decision for her career, but Ella proved them wrong with her debut album ‘Chapter One‘, with every song written or co-written by Ella herself. In the first week, her album went straight into number one, making Simon Cowell a very happy man! Remember her arena audition where she sang her own song that took everyone’s breath away? Well Ella recorded that beautiful song and put it on the album and ‘Missed’ is undeniably my favourite track of hers. The treasured artists of the music industry also made sure they were heard this year with their outstanding albums. Ed Sheeran released his highly anticipated second album ‘X’ in June, and to date, it has been the most streamed album on Spotify of 2014, with over 400 million streams. Apart from ‘Thinking Out Loud’, my favourite song is ‘Tenerife Sea’. One of my queens Jessie J dropped her third studio album ‘Sweet Talker’. The leading single of the album, ‘Bang Bang’, made Jessie world renowned and is her most successful single to date. The success of this hit single made her album a chart topping album. Although ‘Bang Bang’ is the tune that has me running to the dance floor, my stand out song on the album is ‘Sweet Talker’. Many would say that 2014 was the year of Taylor Swift and her fifth studio album, ‘1989‘. This album is her first official pop album, having been a country-pop crossover artist on her previous albums. The stats establish that Swift done right by making this album as it is the best selling album of 2014. I have two favourite songs from ‘1989‘, they are ‘Wildest Dreams’ and ‘Wonderland’.

One Direction’s fourth consecutive album ‘Four’ is an extremely close runner up to my favourite album of the year (I mean it, the only difference is like 0.01%). Personally, I believe ‘Four’ is their best album. Like many of the critics, I believe this album shows maturity (apart from ‘Act My Age’, but we ALL secretly love that tune!!) and growth for the band, with a more rockier sound. The boys wrote 9 of the songs on the album, and even got Ed Sheeran to pen another song for them. Cosmopolitan clearly agree with me as they have named it number eleven on the 20 Best Album’s for 2014 list! Once again, stats confirm that One Direction aren’t going to be disappearing any time soon, as the album went straight in at number one in over 100 countries!! The song that gets me feeling warm and fuzzy is ‘Night Changes’, it is such a beautiful song and shows off everyone’s vocals.

But my album of the year goes to the real breakthrough artists of the year, 5 Seconds of Summer! It was probably obvious I was going to chose them, I never shut up about them and have been promoting them for nearly 3 years to everyone! If you don’t already know, I adore these guys a crazy amount (I have travelled more times to see them live than any other band to date!). If you’ve been hiding under a rock and have no idea who they are or want to refresh your memory of who they are, check out my previous blog on them!

The Australian pop punk band (NOT A BOYBAND) released their self titled debut album  ‘5 Seconds of Summer’  in June and within one week of it’s release in America, it charted in the number one spot in the Billboard 200, selling over 260,000 copies. 5 Seconds of Summer proved they were to be taken seriously in the music industry and soon became one of the most sought after bands at all music award ceremonies such as the MTV Music Awards and the ARIA Awards, entitling them to perform in front of some of the mega stars in the music industry. But it was them touring with One Direction on their tours ‘Take Me Home’ in 2013 and ‘Where We Are’ in 2014 that gave the platform for the Aussies to make a name for themselves. They soon became pals with All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth and co-wrote a few songs with him. ‘She Looks So Perfect‘ was the lead single of the album and no doubt was one of the songs of 2014! The boys wrote the majority of the songs on the album, all bar two in fact, with ‘Amnesia’ wrote by the Madden Brothers and their cover of The Romantic’s ‘What I Like About You’.  With songs like ‘Don’t Stop‘, ‘Good Girls‘, ‘18‘ and ‘End Up Here‘ proving their little cheeky personalities in their song writing and showing they are more All Time Low than One Direction. But these four pretty boys have an emotional side too, and this is evident in their tunes like ‘Long Way Home‘, ‘Beside You‘ and ‘Everything I Didn’t Say’. While writing this blog, I asked my mum what my favourite 5 Seconds of Summer song was (thinking it would make it easier for me) but she had them same answer as I first came up with and that is that I actually like them all and can’t choose a favourite. Although, after two consecutive listens to the album, I came to the conclusion that my top five favorite songs are ‘End Up Here’, ‘Good Girls’, ‘Long Way Home’, ‘Heartbreak Girl’ and ‘Beside You’ (Can I just say I absolutely love every 5 Seconds of Summer song on this album? Because I do!!)

Image from 5SOS-official.tumblr.com

If there is one thing I love more than lots of 5 Seconds of Summer songs, it’s hearing 5 Seconds of Summer live and they answered all my dreams in December this year when they released ‘LIVESOS’. This is their first live album and contains 14 songs, including ‘Disconnected‘, ‘Out of My Limit‘ and their cover of Green Day’s ‘American Idiot‘.

Image from www.5sos.com

So there you have it, my favourite album of 2014 belongs to 5 Seconds of Summer. In my eyes, 2014 belonged to those guys!

So, what was your favourite album of 2014? Comment below 🙂