Year end lists can be tricky.
Once you look past the sheer volume of releases put out in 2014, the task of ranking them is daunting at best. That’s partly why we didn’t. Instead, we had eight of our contributors and staff members answer a series of questions, the trickiest of which was: what was your favourite album of 2014?
The results were varied and in no particular order. They are not consensus across the board, but rather each contributor’s own pick for the year. And sure, some gems were left off—Run the Jewels 2 and even our cover subject Caribou’s Our Love, along with many, many others didn’t ultimately claim top spots even if they were definitely among the year’s best and our favourites—but ultimately, the list is still a varied and solid snapshot of the year.