2014 wasn't a great year for music. Is that a controversial thing to say? It doesn't seem like it should be. As in any year, there was no shortage of perfectly entertaining, even moving music — there just weren't many gamechangers, those YOU HAVE GOT TO HEAR THIS songs and albums.

Really, the music that ruled 2014 was the music of 1984. Thirty years on, that year has been canonized as the greatest-ever year for pop (according to Rolling Stone), and the nostalgia was especially acute here in Minnesota, where Prince, the Replacements, and Husker Du all celebrated 30-year anniversaries of landmark albums while those musicians also shook off the dust and kicked out the jams with high-profile live shows and new releases.

Nothing released this year generated as much excitement as music released in 1984, for reasons that had a lot to do with nostalgia but also had a lot to do with the relatively weak sauce being cooked up in studios this year. That said, in any year--especially when you work at a place like the Current, being showered with new music every day — it's a challenge to narrow the music you liked down to a top 10 list. Here are my lists, first for songs and then for albums.

Top 10 Songs of 2014

1. Howler - "Don't Wanna"
140 seconds of towering garage rock that proves they do still make 'em like they used to. Sometimes, even better.

2. Lizzo and Caroline Smith - "Let 'Em Say"
The day we premiered this song was one of my favorite days at the Current — everyone was walking from cube to cube. "Have you heard the new Lizzo and Caroline Smith?" "YES, IT'S SO GOOD." "I just want to keep playing it again and again. Is that wrong?" "NO!"

3. Jungle - "The Heat"
The coolest track from the year's coolest album, with a cool video to boot, this is a summer song for the ages.

4. Chromeo - "Jealous (I Ain't With It)"
Though Chromeo may never make a full album as consistently strong as the intoxicating
Fancy Footwork (2007), this electro-soul masterpiece jumps out of the speakers and makes me crank the volume every single time it comes on.

5. Ariana Grande - "Problem" feat. Iggy Azalea
The top 10 twin of "Fancy," this put Azalea in the history books as the first artist since the Beatles to lodge her first two Hot 100 singles at numbers one and two simultaneously. The sick sax hook and Grande's virtuoso vocal will ensure that this one's still filling dance floors at the class of 2014's 20-year reunion.

6. Iggy Azalea - "Fancy" feat. Charli XCX
The success of this inescapable earworm had less to do with the rapping of Iggy Azalea —the Zelig of this year's Top 40—than with the snarling chorus from Charli XCX, whose sophomore album Sucker is the most-anticipated release yet to come in 2014.

7. John Mark Nelson - "Boy"
The local singer-songwriter whose previous work I'd found pleasant but unremarkable struck gold with this moving song with an lilting, indelible chorus that lodges in your heart alongside classics by John Denver, James Taylor, and Neil Diamond. Trust me, I mean that as a compliment.

8. Courtney Barnett - "History Eraser"
This shambling, lo-fi rocker conjures heady abandon thanks to Barnett's sharp, deadpan lyrics and intoxicating phrasing.

9. Leonard Cohen - "Did I Ever Love You"
Despite a chorus ending with a rhyme (able/table) that could have gone back to the drawing board, this duet between Cohen and a female chorus is ineffably poignant.

10. Sia - "Chandelier"
Every year needs its absolutely epic karaoke jam, and this is 2014's.

Top 10 Albums of 2014

1. Kelis, Food
It's a bold move to name your album Food: if there's anything people take more seriously than who they bed, it's what they eat. Kelis delivered, though, with a glorious album offering a full menu of substantial, varied cuts. Like the best of its namesake, this thick-with-soul album leaves you full but wanting more.

2. Jungle, Jungle
Neo-soul is having a hot moment, and this year few did it hotter than these U.K. prodigies who dropped this astonishing debut. Twinned vocals cruise through a smoky, percolating soundscape that's absolutely lousy with hooks.

3. Lily Allen, Sheezus
Satisfying relationships aren't often the fodder for interesting music, but Allen re-emerged as a happily married mum with her signature attitude fully intact, leaning forward with radio-friendly production while also leaning back with unapologetic lyrics about how great it is to be with a decent dude. Who would have guessed back in the hazy days of 2006 that "consistent" would ever be a word you could use to describe Lily Allen's musical output?

4. Tove Lo, Queen of the Clouds
The Swedes strike again! Hopefully the listeners who discover Tove Lo via her relatively wan contribution to the Mockingjay soundtrack will dig a little deeper and spin this strutting, varied collection of bangers.

5. Azealia Banks, Broke with Expensive Taste
Thank God for Azealia Banks, coming out of nowhere with this long-delayed LP to spice a largely bland year up. This also ended up sounding like a rebuke to Taylor Swift, whose 1989 was more a theoretical nod to the music of that era; Banks is the one who remembers that 1989 was the year Rhythm Nation happened.

6. First Aid Kit, Stay Gold
A Swedish Americana album you can sink into like a warm bath.

7. Sharon Van Etten, Are We There
An Album with a capital A, this collection grabs you by the left ventricle and never lets go. There are no individual standout tracks: it's best heard as a single 47-minute cry of loss and regret.

8. Jenny Lewis, The Voyager
With HAIM wrapping up their album cycle, this year no one flew the flag of sunny folk-rock-pop higher than Jenny Lewis. This is the year's best Tom Petty album, and Tom Petty put an album out this year too.

9. Ariana Grande, My Everything
The New York Times noted that Taylor Swift's new album, railroading everything else on the charts this year, was unusual in its pop purity: no guest rappers, no EDM beats. It was the less-abstentious Ariana Grande, though, who in going with the flow created a far more satisfying pop confection.

10. Courtney Barnett, The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas
The year's most effectively unassuming album, Barnett's Double EP introduced her to thousands of new listeners as that girl at the party who gives absolutely zero f***s and gets more fascinating the longer you listen to her shaggy-dog tales.

Related

• Vote for your favorite songs of 2014 for The Current's Top 89 countdown
• Top 89: The Current Staff Picks