Top 10 Best Songs of 2014 According to Complex

For those not familiar with the concept: I am in the middle of retrospectively compiling my top ten songs of each year of the 2010s. Afterwards, I compare it to the top ten picks of three very different publications: Rolling Stone, laut.de, and Complex. Rolling Stone is probably the biggest music magazine worldwide and focuses on mainstream opinions. laut.de is a well-known German music critic website that claims to have a good taste in music. Complex is a former magazine, now a website, that focuses on youth culture and music, and it writes its lists subjectively.

So, what is to say about what Complex picked for their 2014 list?

It is clear where the magazine has its comfort zone: hip-hop. Like always, they have a well-balanced mix of well-known mainstream jams and some more obscure tracks. What makes their list more interesting than the others is that it's 100 percent subjective. You can tell from the texts. These are intelligent people with passion for what they do, and when they chose "No Flex Zone" as number seven - a song often cited on TTT as a bad track that just somehow got popular and, therefore, gets positive professional reviews - you can be absolutely sure they ranked it so highly not because of its success but because they genuinely like it.

And I can understand why. In its subgenre of trap, this song is absolutely fun and well done. It has a perfect flow and is unusually energetic. (And yes, I considered it for my personal list of the year, but there were simply more mind-blowing songs.)

However, I am not such a fan of songs number two and five. To me, they lack anything that makes such tracks memorable. The beats, lines, and flows are nothing more than basic to my ears. Nevertheless, you can tell how much fun the Complex team had with them - especially with their number two item. The text written by one of their authors for that song is as long as the write-ups for all the top ten items on Rolling Stone's list combined.

In conclusion, much like the last time, Complex may not have my favorite picks out of the three magazines, but it has, by miles, the most interesting, honest, and passionate article. That is something the other two sites completely lack (Rolling Stone more so than laut.de).

Source: www.complex.com/music/2014/12/best-songs-2014/, Created on 2/7/2018

The Top Ten

0 to 100 (The Catch Up) - Drake