The Top 40 Songs of 2014
FKA Twigs – “Two Weeks”
In order to successfully redefine pop, you have to at least deliver it. As an arresting presence and builder of her own image, FKA Twigs had been consistently masterful from her first appearance. As a plausible hit maker for radio? Stadium headliner? Grammy performer? Any of the stuff that comes with being a star, and not just a critical curio? Not quite. “Two Weeks” is the song when she delivers all of it, the sound, the hook, and the vocal performance to go with the always staggering art direction. As good as LP1 is at holding its mood of quivering half-ecstasy, this is the pivotal part where all that longing ends. She’s expressed public disgust at the familiar, reductive term “alternative R&B.” But even those annoyed by it have to admit that as idea, if not a coherent ideology, alt-R&B has been a continually rising trendline in hip music over the last half decade. This feels a lot like its culmination.
D’Angelo – “Sugah Daddy”
D’Angelo’s joyous “Sugah Daddy” arrives as a definite alternative to that. It’s probably dumb to use something nursed by a tortured genius over the course of 15 years as the sign of a wider counter-trend, but it’s not an accident that the lived-in warmth and obvious humanity of Black Messiah should feel like such an immediate relief.
(P.S.: This annual December Surprise album drop from a mega-famous artist, and the way it fucks up everybody’s list-making, is actually kind of a fun new tradition that breaks up the slog to consensus, right?)