With 2014 on the way out the door, the internet is currently drowning in “Best Of” lists recapping every shining accomplishment and subjective appreciation the year had to offer. And while we’ve enjoyed looking back at the Best Albums of 2014, did a festival memory-lane walk with the Best Concert Pics of 2014, and made you sexy motherfuckers a mixtape of the Best Songs of 2014, there’s also a grotesquely rancid pop-culture underbelly to all the hype and froth.
As our obsession with beating the same buzzword horse into a puddle of TMZ-brand glue edges ever closer to outright fetishism, we’ve been helped along the way by a few completely inescapable cultural phenomenons – ones which, for better or worse, will be the defining milestones of one weird-ass year in music.
Crave has compiled the year’s worst offenders, the stories and celebrities we’d love to collectively put in a box and shoot into space, in our list of 2014 Music Memories We’d Like to Forget.
2014 Music Memories We’d Like to Forget
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U2 Ruined Their Legacy With Publicity Stunt
You aint punk rock, Bono, no matter how many times you say it’s true. Force-feeding your album to the entire world and then claiming it was a subversive act of artistic revolution was roughly as stupid as Rolling Stone naming it the best record of the year. It doesn't matter what Jann Wenner has to say (fuck him, he loves Yoko Ono). You're done.
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Elevatorgate
Jay Z got attacked by
the mythical chupacabrasister-in-law Solange in an elevator while Beyonce looked on, and it was all caught on surveillance cameras. Dude cannot legitimately perform "99 Problems" ever again. -
Dave Grohl Everywhere, All Year Long
He’s all over your TV, he’s all up in your radio, he's everywhere at once, and legions of bloggy bloggersons breathlessly report his every move and utterance - even though his band’s new album is universally regarded as a lukewarm soundtrack to an HBO show. Now the de facto spokesman, mascot, ambassador and torch-bearer for rock n’ roll is even contemplating starting his own festival. For fuck’s sake, man. Take a year off. Make another Crooked Vultures record. Drink some coffee. We know you love coffee. We love you. Just give us a fucking breather, dude.
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Thug Life Bieber
Dropcrotch-pants wearing baby thug wannabe Justin Bieber was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of drag racing, resisting arrest, driving on a suspended license and DUI. The bratty dipshit wannabe-ghetto-boy has had a bumpy road in 2014, with over $80k paid to a neighbor for egging their house (ball so hard), an embarrassing racist song leak, a charge for smuggling monkeys, another charge for abandoning his pet monkey and more. But that’s nothing money can’t fix, and baby Biebs has plenty of that, raking in nearly $80 million this year alone.
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All About That Bass
Can we be all about that shut the fuck up please? Have you ever heard a song with the treble turned all the way down? It sounds like shit. Aint nothin' wrong with some treble.
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Nicki Minaj's Ass
Yeah, this one can stay. She may have rubbed her big ass all over every damn thing this year, but is that really such a bad thing?
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The Taylor Swift Spotify War
Taylor was all ‘peace out’ and Spotify was all ‘no, don’t go’ and Taylor was like ‘music aint free, son!’ and Spotify was all ‘YouTube Pandora SoundCloud piracy, bitches!’ and we want to put our heads through a fucking meat grinder. Then Diplo said something about her having no ass, which was absolutely correct. But he took it too far, and Lorde called out his tiny dick. Taylor is undoubtedly too busy picking out a new set of quilted doilies and looking at kitten whiskers on Pinterest to notice or care, but Thom Yorke agrees with her. Meanwhile, she also had the best song of the year.
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The Fake $800 Million Led Zeppelin Reunion
Robert Plant is an asshole, you guys! He totally tore up an $800 million contract to reunite Led Zeppelin for the most lucrative tour of all time! They could have even ridden around in Richard Branson’s spaceship if they wanted! Except, oh wait, it’s entirely bullshit. We'll never see Led Zeppelin performing again, and that's not a bad thing. Do you really want your most prominent memories of one of the most mythologized and adored bands of all time to be geriatric versions of what we love. No. Let it go.
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Farm Aid: Ebola
It’s bad enough that we spent half the year dealing with American hyper-hysteria over the organ-liquefying disease from Africa that’s killed exactly ONE person in this country. Meanwhile, over 400,000 people a year die from smoking. Now that retardedly bad “Do they know it’s Christmas” song from 1984 has gotten a revamped treatment with - get ready for this - One Direction, Adele, Bono, Ellie Goulding, Sinead fucking crazybones O’Connor and a ton of other people you’ve never heard of and would never in your life consider willfully listening to. Not to mention calling for a newly menacing reinterpretation of the line, “tonight thank God it’s them instead of you…”
Is this really the song we want to be fucking playing to help resolve a horrible disease?
Even more ridiculous is that Bob Geldof is organizing Band Aid 30 to help raise money for the cause. Because the UN supposedly called him and requested it. Even the logo – an outline of Africa with BAND AID written across it, along with a hashtag “#E30LA” – feels cheap and insulting.
Meanwhile, education, health care, school programs, national infrastructure, social programs and more are being axed across the board in America while corporate tax-whores avoid paying their share and we commit infinite funds to perpetual worldwide war. Ebola can kiss our collective ass, and so can your stupid-ass tribute concert, Bob Geldof.
