Guess I’ll go with Lorde here - not much else appeals to me. My favorite alternative songs from 2013:
My Bloody Valentine - New You
Ex Cops - James
Autre Ne Veut - Play By Play
Foxygen - Shuggie
Veronica Falls - Teenage
Robyn Hitchcock - Strawberries Dress
Laura Stevenson - Runner
Edwyn Collins - Too Bad (That’s Sad)
Wire - Love Bends
Whoa, Woodstockbirdy snuck this entry in quickly, probably because it’s the penultimate one for this genre.
Even more whoa, I have to agree with Woodstockbirdy on Lorde’s “Royals”
And even more whoa, the 2013 Also-Ran list from Playlist Research seems more half-baked than usual, with two entries for “Mount Moriah - The Letting Go” listed. Oops. Doesn’t seem to be a lot of the class of the early '90s on the Also-Rans this time, although Pearl Jam is there along with Tori Amos (it also has the now obligatory dosage of “Muse”).
Is everyone looking forward to the 2014 top songs poll with keen anticipation? No? Me neither, I seem to be stuck in the pre-2005 period…
This decision was tighter than a Texas tick on a bull’s scrotum on the Fourth of July, but I picked “Out of My League” over “Royals.”
Do not love or hate any of these songs, voted for “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities.
In a Lorde-less year, I would be happy to pick “Madness.” That was not last year.
Not a bad year, though it pales a bit in comparison to '12. AM by the Arctic Monkeys came out in '13 and was the best album of the year (of several years, really), but didn’t manage to chart anything to number one. Agree that the extended list is a bit weird as well.
Lorde is pretty much pop as far as I’m concerned, and not really my kind of pop at that, though I have to acknowledge the influence of that song. That particular Imagine Dragons track suffers from overexposure even more than Gotye from the year prior. Let’s go with Out of My League - Fitz and the Tantrums are pretty poppy too, but I really like several songs from that CD.
“Do I Wanna Know?” went to #1 in 2014. That really became their first big hit with some crossover, and then the other singles got more play after that. I know that right now I hear “R U Mine?” several times per day, and “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?” was big. Looks like those 2 songs hit top 5 Alternative. For comparison, “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor” at #7 was their only previous hit there (though I’ve heard several of their other songs, at least 1 single from each album, on US Alternative radio).