29. MØ – No Mythologies to Follow
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s pretty crucial that you watch the Nardwuar interview with MØ.

28. FKA Twigs – LP1
Everyone lost their shit when this record came out. It took me three listens to decide that it wasn’t the most boring record of the year. Now I think it’s pretty alright.

27. Banks – Goddess
Great record. Tons of promise. One to watch in 2015.

26. Clean Bandit – New Eyes
“Rather Be” has around half a billion plays between all the major sources, and while that might be the best song on the album, there’s a lot of good stuff here.

25. Caribou – Our Love
I love the sound coming out of Ottawa right now, especially Jessy Lanza. I’m still not in love with Dan Snaith’s catalog as a whole, but the production on this record is enough to get a place on my list.

24. Broods – Evergreen
When you’re walking through the airport all alone, thinking about someone that’s far, far away, and your plane takes off at sunset, and you look out across a sky of big puffy pink and blue clouds, it’s Broods.

23. Odesza – In Return
Unquestionably some of the best songs of the year are on this record. It was completely unexpected, and if you’d asked me a year ago to go to an Odesza show, I’d probably have turned you down. Not anymore.

22. Jamaica – Ventura
It’s no secret that I love French music, and this record is no different. Wake up America. The Frenchies are coming for our pop music.

21. Death From Above 1979 – The Physical World
Yep. It’s Death From Above. Yep. It’s amazing. Yep. Your face will melt.

20. Wye Oak – Shriek
This is my Poliça of 2014. Beautiful, sexy, cool.

19. White Lung – Deep Fantasy
This is how I want my rock & roll to sound.

18. Kitten – Kitten
I saw them a couple years ago with Paramore and Chloe Chaidez was more entertaining than a box full of kittens and a laser pointer. Not only is she a beautiful style icon, she’s a force on the mic. Watch out, pop music. Ms. Chaidez has arrived.

17. Glass Animals – Zaba
Glass Animals is single handedly responsible for the forthcoming baby boom. You know what’s gooey? The people listening to this album.

16. Sam Smith – In The Lonely Hour
It’s a beautiful record from pop culture’s next Adele. Watch out for him to clean up at the grammies.

15. Pharrell – G I R L
This is how partying sounds without the crying, bad decisions, and regret-filled mornings. He’s got more hooks than a fishing hat.

14. Jungle – Jungle
Where did you come from, Jungle? Did TV on the Radio have a love child with Klaxons? According to wikipedia, they formed in 2013, which is enough to send the self-conscious under achiever in me spiraling with despair. Yeah, well I started a blog. Take your perfect record and go back to England.

13. Dum Dum Girls – Too True
Certainly their most complete record, Too True will make you want to wear all black, start a band, get famous, and headline a music festival just for the remote chance at a date with one of the Dum Dum Girls.

12. SOHN – Tremors
This is a record for the heartbroken, full of lonely lyrics and heartfelt hooks. It takes a special state of mind to appreciate the beauty of this record.

11. Tensnake – Glow
This was another surprise. I wouldn’t even be disappointed if a DJ just played this record straight through instead of mixing a set. It’s that good.

10. Ryan Adams – Ryan Adams
This record will likely be the one that most withstands the test of time for me. Ryan is really in his prime at his new PaxAm studio in LA, considering two of the records in my top 10 were made there. This is the culmination of the Ryan Adams project, his finest work, without question. He really seems happier, and it’s finally coming through in his music.

9. Chromeo – White Women
This is another band finally achieving what they’ve been promising for nearly a decade. It’s fun, smart, catchy without being kitschy — everything a good record should be. I want to see a Chromeo show every day.

8. Sylvan Esso – Sylvan Esso
Oh hello, North Carolina. Sometimes I think this band is completely carried by Amelia Meath’s incredible vocal work, but then the production — in particular the restraint that Nick Sanborn shows — reminds me that it truly is a collaboration. It’s an incredible debut record.

7. Jenny Lewis – The Voyager
“This might be the best Ryan Adams album since Love is Hell,” my buddy Kyle said. I can say without fail, that this certainly is the best Jenny Lewis album of all time.

6. Mr. Little Jeans – Pocketknife
If you like pop music, you have to listen to this record. One gets the sense that it’s a true reflection of Monica Berkenes — fun, happy, but deeply emotional. In that way, it’s kind of a reflection of every Norwegian I’ve ever met. It’s a perfect album.

5. RAC – Strangers
The featured artists list on this record reads like a music festival green room artist list. With that much talent and a producer that seems to have an ear for pop the way Picasso had an eye for rectangles makes for one excellent piece of music. The live shows are fantastic, too.

4. Kishi Bashi – Lighght
I have a tendency to love records that are deceptively simple — layers of clever melodies, lyrics that hinge more on rhythm and rhyme than depth and meaning. This album is a major exception. Exceptionally smart, masterfully executed, and thoughtfully written, this is a record for musicians as well as music lovers.

3. Lana Del Rey – Ultraviolence
I can’t believe I’m putting Lana Del Rey this high on my list, but I think I finally get it. She’s telling a story with her entire life. She’s a character in her own world, and this record is as beautiful as her reflection. Dan Auerbach’s contributions no doubt played a role in my opinion of this album, but goddamn is it something special.

2. Bombay Bicycle Club – So Long, See You Tomorrow
Flawless. Exceptional. Beautiful. So deserving of the number one spot, and only my personal prejudices kept it out. It’s an amazing piece of work. Don’t read. Listen.

1. Phantogram – Voices
Beauty like this doesn’t come along every day. No, I’m not talking about singer Sarah Barthel (but I’m also not not talking about her either). They’ve been telling this story for a long time: the only thing that’s important is who and what you love, and one day you’ll die alone in a see of black emptiness. It’s a fairy tale for the fucked up, those of us in love with the miserable honesty of the world, and finally Phantogram has developed that message to it’s penultimate climax. This is the kind of sadness that makes life worth living.

Sam Smith continues his unblemished lifetime streak of making awesome songs.

The 22-year old took to the BBC 1 to cover the 1988 Tracy Chapman classic, “Fast Car.”

It’s deeper, bass driven, more rhythmic, modernized, and soulful — everything we’ve come to expect from a good Sam Smith track.

There may come a day when I get sick of this guy. That day is not today.

Do you have an idea for a rule? Include it in the comments below!

Drink every time you see:

• A hula hoop
• Someone with dreadlocks
• Janelle Monae moonwalking
• Tie dye
• Nudity of any kind, finish your drink
• Anyone actually sleeping during Andrew Bird
• White girl dance moves
• Someone wearing boat shoes or a polo shirt at Vampire Weekend
• Anyone smoking pot or pot leafs on flags, shirts, drum sets
• A singer saying something political. If it’s the about the NSA, finish your drink
• Someone wearing a jacket at Cake
• The mushroom fountain at the festival
• Someone crying during Sam Smith
• Anyone complaining about the heat
• Ninja from Die Antwoord thrusting his pelvis or Yolandi showing her ass
• Any on stage cameos
• Someone wearing neon at Cut Copy
• Jack White saying anything about the Black Keys, finish your drink
• Anyone literally dead from heatstroke
• Someone your with describing Warpaint as “So fucking hot”
• Skrillex drop the bass during the Super Jam
• Danny Brown saying something incomprehensible
• Anyone your with making a pun about a Lionel Richie song
• Any artist saying they’re playing a new song
• Someone that could only be described as “a dirty hippie”
• Anyone you know singing along with an Elton John song
• Any banjo, mandolin, or fiddle
• Wiz Khalifa drinking
• Any foreign flag
• Anybody wearing sunglasses at Zedd

Stream the album via Grooveshark below

Well the Sam Smith album is here, and I think he’s still on pace for meteoric fame, though maybe on a different trajectory than I expected.

This is ballad heavy, Sunday afternoon music. This is the album you put on between Ray La Montagne and Norah Jones. You cook dinner with this album on. You stare wistfully out a window with a hot cup of tea on a rainy fall afternoon. You read in your bay window in your jam jams with this album playing in the background.

But this album has a more frightening, insidious side. This album was made for romcom montages.

Seriously, play this track, and read on.

It’s that moment in the movie, where the guy fucks up and the movie keeps cutting back and forth between him and the girl while they do chores around their house and keep coming across the little trinkets from their relationship. The sweater he left at her house. The earring she lost under his bed. They both go out with their respective friends to talk things over.  ”I can tell you one thing, girl. If it doesn’t feel right, just let him go,” her best girlfriend tells her over a glass of chardonnay at some bougie wine bar. “What about Tina? Dude, Tina’s so hot man,” his drunk sports buddies tell him at the pub. “Yeah bro, you should call Tina.” And then as their walking home alone, heads down in thought, they bump into each other at a dimly lit intersection lined with brownstone stoops and old oak trees. “Oh hey,” he says. “Hi,” she says. “I was just headed home from the Chesterfield,” he awkwardly tells her. “Oh, cool,” she timidly responds, “I just had coffee with Amy. I.. I should probably get going.” “Yeah. Yeah me too,” he says. They realize that they’re both oddly going the same direction now, so they walk together, some uncomfortable distance between them, but an overwhelming look of relief on their faces. Some hidden looks, some secret smiles. He gets to her door, and says, “Well. I guess this is goodbye.” “I guess so,” she says, and he turns to leave. “But you know, I… I didn’t mean what I said,” he tells her, referring to whatever dumb shit he said to get them here. “I know,” she says, looking up at him gently. “And it was you, you know. It was always you.” “Really?” she says as he starts dashing up the stairs at her. “Always. It was always you.” And they kiss. Cut to wedding bells. Roll credits where the next track, “I’m Not the Only One,” plays during the reception, where we see all his friends shacking up with her babetastic bridesmaids, even the awkward comic relief and the goofy chick with a lazy eye are hitting it off. Bam. Summer blockbuster done.

That’s basically this album. It’s a PG-13 sex scene, heavy on the lips, lots of strategically placed upper arm. Sam Smith is about to soft-core fuck your ears, and no one is getting off.

Hugely commercial, hugely appealing to gigantic swaths of romantics around the world, this will be the album of the summer. You will hear it everywhere. It will dominate media for the next two years. It will be on TV, in movies, it will follow you from the radio of your car to the aisles of the supermarket. You’ll hear instrumental versions in elevators and on hold with the power company. The same song will be on three radio stations at the same time.

Sam Smith has arrived. He’ll be as famous as Adele. He’ll win the Mercury Prize. He’ll be humble and say something adorable at the Grammys.

Five years from now, when he’s settled down with his new beau and they’ve adopted a couple of racially ambiguous twins, we’ll all tell stories about how he once did that song with Disclosure.

Sam Smith’s debut album is up for pre-sale on iTunes, and with it came the release of a new, softer single, “Leave Your Lover.”

The album follows last year’s EP, “Nirvana,” which certified that the 22 year old British singer can stand on his own, despite his meteoric rise with game-changers Disclosure.

This is the new face of R&B, and it’s a long awaited overhaul. Rich with soul, ripe with authenticity and genuine, sanguine emotion, the music of Sam Smith promises to have a timeless staying power that so few have achieved in an entire lifetime.

This album is going to be fucking awesome.

It drops June 17th.

Sam Smith – Leave Your Lover