the top 50 best songs of 2014 (part i: 50-26) (VIDEO)

That's part one, now part two!

the top albums/songs of the midyear - 2014

Holy shit, this video took hours. Really happy with it... except for some of the volume levels on the music, but that was such a pain in the ass to get right that I'm fine with where they are.

Next up, Mastodon. Stay tuned!

the top albums/songs of the midyear - 2014

I've been debating with myself pretty consistently over the past few weeks whether or not to make this. It's a pretty common thing with critics to take stock of their favourites at this point of the year, and considering I've covered 108 albums thus far this year, in terms of sheer volume it'd make sense for me to go back and take stock of what I've heard and what deserves consideration going into the second half of the year. And while I'm leery about spoiling my year-end list, long-time fans will probably be able to figure that out anyways, so why not go the extra mile and draw a spotlight to some acts that are definitely worth the consideration. 

So without further ado:

video review: 'road between' by lucy hale

Man, this was a great surprise. Seriously, get this record, it's better than you'd ever expect.

Next up... ugh, I should probably get Riff Raff out of the way before talking about Jack White. And then, a surprise for my 200th episode, so stay tuned!

album review: 'road between' by lucy hale

So I've mentioned in the past that I really don't watch a lot of TV, on the count of not owning one. When I do sit down to watch TV... well, of currently running shows, that list is pretty thin. Girls, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Mad Men, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the occasional episode of Glee or The Big Bang Theory, but with Community's unfortunate cancellation and How I Met Your Mother's finale getting all the more frustrating every time I think about it, my TV schedule looks pretty thin right now.

Now one of the shows I haven't watched is Pretty Little Liars, the ABC thriller drama based on a series of teen novels of which the most I know about are the mostly hilarious and occasionally insightful recaps I read over at Autostraddle. And from that peripheral information, I discovered that one of the actresses of the show, Lucy Hale, was going to be releasing a country debut album Road Between. 

Now, normally I don't cover these sorts of albums - I make it a priority to mostly ignore this sort of soap-opera-to-music fare, mostly because it tends to be pretty plastic, assembled by committee in order to give young actresses another creative outlet - and especially when coming from Hollywood Records, which has a really bad reputation for this sort of production. But considering I cover whatever comes out of the increasingly large number of singing competitions which often has the same assembly process, and since I am the country music critic on YouTube who actually will give this stuff the time of day, and since I'm in favour of highlighting more women in country music, even if it's just pop country, I gave Road Between by Lucy Hale a chance. After all, it's got a song by Kacey Musgraves on it, it can't be that bad, right?