How 2014 Was the Worst Year in Pop Music of the Last Decade

10 years ago this month, Pharrell Williams’s single “Happy” reached number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and remained there for 10 consecutive weeks. Bolstered by its success as a soundtrack single for Despicable Me 2 and colossal radio favor, “Happy” became the best-selling song of 2014 by nearly 2 million sales. But there’s something despicable—pun intended—about “Happy” and its tremendous success. In the late 1990s and 2000s, Pharrell (along with childhood friend Chad Hugo) built a reputation as one-half of the production duo the Neptunes. His and Hugo’s productions were boisterous and playful, and their work with Kanye West, Jay-Z, Clipse, Kelis, Snoop Dogg and a platinum guest list of other artists defined the 2000s. When Pharrell collaborated with pop stars like with Justin Timberlake on “Rock Your Body” or Britney Spears on “I’m a Slave 4 U,” his touch was fresh and lively. Pharrell Williams was, in short, cool. Anyone looking through Pharrell’s production credits would suggest he’s more than capable of creating a global smash under his own name. No one could have guessed it would be as boring as “Happy.”

Pharrell is not the only artist who would be ubiquitous in the worst way in 2014. A cursory glance at 2014’s Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100—which tracks the best-charting songs of the year on Billboard’s Hot 100 through the year—reveals some of the most regrettable hits of the 2010s. There are ultra-saccharine ballads like John Legend’s “All Of Me,” A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera’s “Say Something,” Passenger’s “Let Her Go”; corny “alt” anthems like Bastille’s “Pompeii,” Imagine Dragons’ “Demons” or American Authors’s “Best Day Of My Life”; trite pastiches, like Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” and MAGIC!’s “Rude.”

Bad hits are a part of life, and as reliable as our planet orbiting the sun. Every year offers its own songs that age like milk. But, from a purely commercial level, 2014 had hits that weren’t just bad—they were nameless, unidentifiable and unimpactful. This was a year without an identity. Sure, 2013’s Billboard Year-End chart includes plenty of songs that also don’t stand the test of time (the Top 10 of that list includes not one, but two tracks by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis). But, at the very least, there was a defining characteristic to pop music culture that year: the cheap, blown-out EDM of Baauer’s “Harlem Shake,” Rihanna’s “Diamonds” and Pitbull’s “Feel The Moment”; or the mid-tempo empowerment ballads of the Obama era, like P!nk’s “Just Give Me A Reason” and Katy Perry’s “Roar.” From Sia to Skrillex, pop music from 2010 to 2013 tended towards ear-consuming bombast. If nothing else, this first era of the 2010s had personality and persona. Where did that go?

Of course, there is an un-ignorable and obvious exception. Who else could it be but Taylor Swift? In October 2014, Swift released her fifth album and first “official pop” album, 1989. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), 1989 was the second-best selling album of the year—bowing out only to the soundtrack to Frozen. But even 1989 seems to enforce this theory, due to how Swift’s pop persona was, by her design, ambiguous and general. She made an album that was defined by its anonymity, and her writing could still connect to millions of listeners on a personal level. But the album—and particularly lead single “Shake It Off”—could also soundtrack workout classes, fifth grade PTA events and endless radio playlists. And not to split hairs, but 1989’s superior singles “Blank Space” and “Style” were both more popular in 2015.

Making broad-stroked arguments about a year of music is a futile exercise. Like every other year, 2014 had plenty of enduring albums, in pop music and otherwise—like FKA twigs’ LP1, Run the Jewels 2, Mac DeMarco’s Salad Days and Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence. At the same time, 2014 lacked a pervading identity or direction—yielding a lot of forgettable albums and hits that do not stand against the test of time. It had the lowest total revenue of recorded music since the year 1989, coincidentally, and it saw structural changes in how music was marketed and consumed. The result is a pop music void, where the best-selling music was traditional, boring and, to quote Pharrell, “Happy.” Ultimately, the way that artists, labels and listeners chose to fill that void portends the structures, and many problems, that the music industry faces today.

In 2014, Spotify’s dominance of music culture began in earnest. After launching in the U.S. in July 2011, the streaming service stagnated through the early 2010s. But by 2014, streaming’s implications for the music industry finally emerged: Between the end of 2013 and the end of 2014, twice as many people were googling Spotify, according to Google Trends, and subscribers for the streamer exploded. The Los Angeles Times reported that Spotify ended 2013 with 24 million active subscribers. By January 2015, that number had more than doubled to 60 million active users.

Inversely, digital downloads decreased. Digital downloads—namely buying a song or an album on iTunes—accounted for 40% of the recorded music industry’s revenues in 2012 and 2013. By the end of 2014, that fell to 37%. And, as expected based on its exploding subscriber count, revenue from streaming increased from 21% in 2013 to 27% in 2014. By 2015, streaming accounted for a larger share of the industry’s revenue than digital downloads.

When you spend 99 cents or $1.29 on a song, you play that song in full. You repeat it, even if you don’t like it. That $1.29 single would be more worth the money if it was longer. Hence, pop stars delivered the hefty, dense singles that defined the era. You get the roaring ballads like Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” Rihanna’s “Stay” or Katy Perry’s “Firework.” You get multi-part dance-pop tracks, with a rap feature to make them even more worth the price (“California Gurls,” “Thrift Shop,” “Blurred Lines”). With streaming, the value that consumers place on individual songs decreases. If you don’t like a song, there’s no sunk cost. You just don’t add it to your playlists. There’s no need to get your money’s worth out of every song you hear.

Obviously, these changes in music consumption didn’t impact the dominant styles instantaneously. Artists who make pop music were, most likely, unconcerned with the influence Spotify would have when they were writing and recording 2014’s hits. What is more likely is that the music industry failed to understand its ever-shifting audience during a crucial moment of transition. Younger listeners trended towards streaming and listening to music on YouTube, caring less about what they were streaming since they didn’t have to pay for each track individually. Older listeners, or those more inert to these changes, continued to buy, though. Thus, two of the best selling albums of the year were AC/DC’s Rock or Bust and Pink Floyd’s The Endless River—neither of which are highly regarded, beloved by fans or, frankly, all that memorable.

It’s harder to track the impact of a song when its consumption is scattered across multiple places, and it’s even harder to market a newer artist when you can’t pinpoint where those potential fans are. In 2014, a host of new pop stars released big singles: Charli XCX’s “Boom Clap” and feature on “Fancy” with Iggy Azalea, Tinashe’s “2 On,” Tove Lo’s “Habits (Stay High).” But in the new and unfamiliar streaming economy, “new” pop stars didn’t land in the same way. Younger audiences cared less about what they were streaming, since they didn’t have to pay for each track individually. Therefore, a hit song from a newer artist no longer provided a clear path towards permanent pop stardom.

Between the shifting waters of the industry and a growing fatigue towards the fist-pumping, party-starting pop records of 2010-2013, the result is a slew of popular records that are also middle-of-the-road records: Maroon 5’s V, Ed Sheeran’s X, and Coldplay’s Ghost Stories. Post-Disney and Nickelodeon pop stars like Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato shied away from previous albums that were more reflective of their individual tastes (the R&B-lite of Grande’s Yours Truly or Lovato’s pivot to pop-punk) and opted for impersonal collaborators and producers. The impact of Lorde’s “Royals”—often credited as the turning point towards the moodier, more reflective style of pop music that would take hold from 2015 onward—had yet to sink in. It’s no surprise that 2014’s best-selling album (Frozen) and best-selling song (“Happy”) were both attached to animated films; Pixar and Disney still had the cultural momentum to reach a splintering audience.

In a Buzzfeed article (a publication that would also reach its heyday circa-2014) titled “The Most Popular Music Of 2013 Isn’t Quite What You’d Expect,” writer Matthew Perpetua points out the discrepancy between what dominated music media and what earned the most revenue from recorded music, a gap that would become even more obvious the following year. That discrepancy was two-fold: Scattered music consumption across iTunes, YouTube and Spotify failed to provide an easy platform for artists and labels to market their music. It also made it harder for consumers to understand what was popular.

A decade later, 2014 is re-contextualized in pop culture as peak-Tumblr era (although a vast majority of the most recognizably-Tumblr albums, like AM, The 1975, Pure Heroine and I Love You. came out the year before). It’s the final chapter of a time when the digital world didn’t feel like a detriment. An article published earlier this year in Dazed Digital titled “Why can’t we move past 2014?” mourns the year as “one of the last times we could be ourselves online, especially on Instagram.” And in music culture, playlist-friendly conglomerates of EDM, pop, hip-hop and alternative filled the void of a style of pop that could no longer match the ways that people were listening. It was the midpoint and the breaking point—from digital singles to streaming, dubstep to tropical house and an industry losing revenue to an industry gaining revenue through an unfair model against the artists generating it.

It’s easy to see parallels to our current digital climate. TikTok, once an exciting frontier and source of genuine fun online, has become commodified. It’s become a place where major music companies are at odds with how people discover and consume new music. 10 years after a tepid year in pop transformed what rules the charts and how we listen to it, we’re in the crux of another pivot into something even more inscrutable and decentralized. The only question is, what’s going to fill the void this time?

Andy Steiner is a writer and musician. When he’s not reviewing albums, you can find him collecting ‘80s Rush merchandise. Follow him on Instagram or Twitter.