The Metaphorical Boat's Top Songs of 2013 - 35-31

We're up to numbers 35-31 of our top songs of 2013, and features two top 30 hits from two great rock/indie artists, upcoming Britpop revivalists, a band who were around during the original Britpop, and a girl-band cover of a My Bloody Valentine track:

35. Foals - My Number

34. The Killers - Shot At the Night

33. Superfood - Superfood

32. Shonen Knife - When You Sleep

31. Primal Scream - It's Alright, It's OK

The UK Blog Sound of 2014 - The Longlist

The Blog Sound Of... Poll was first published in 2011. The concept of the poll wasn’t to criticise the established BBC Sound of list, but simply an experiment to see if UK music bloggers could come up with its own list of emerging artists that was more representative of their community and give the artists that were nominated some extra publicity. Indeed the idea was to compliment the BBC list in many ways by providing an alternative to compare and contrast.

The 2011 list contained some interesting alternatives to the BBC list including Mercury Prize winners Alt-J and Bastille who have found huge commercial success in the UK in 2013. The 2012 list was more similar to the BBC list with Haim being the runaway winners, followed closely by Chvrches.

The UK Blog Sound of 2014 poll is the biggest yet with 59 blogs each nominating their 3 favourite emerging artists. It has been retitled to give emphasis to the fact that it is a list created by UK bloggers, although the choices of music can come from around the world. This year however, 15 of the 16 most voted for artists are British.

The winning act and close runners up will be revealed on the 2^nd of January in a short list of three.

This list contains a range of artists that have all received strong coverage from UK bloggers over the last year and can therefore be seen to be a good representation of what music bloggers have been enjoying listening to.

The sixteen artists that made this year's UK Blog Sound of 2014 longlist are:

Banks - Sultry electronic music with a hint of soul from Los Angeles - the only non-UK act on the list.

E M B E R S - Cinematic and vast indie rock from Manchester

George Ezra - Singer songwriter with a bluesy voice

Hella Better Dancer - Dark and fiery indie rock band

Hockeysmith - Genre hopping sister duo from Cornwall

Honeyblood - Raw DIY indie rock two piece from Glasgow

Iyes - Edgy sweetly melodic pop duo from Brighton

KHUSHI - Endearing East London singer who sits somewhere between pop, indie and folk

Lyla Foy - Previously known as Wall, creator of delicate, brooding, intimate pop

Marika Hackman - Singer songwriter with haunting folk references

Mt. Wolf - Dreamy sounding band that combine electronics, acoustic music and ambient atmospherics with near operatic vocals.

Royal Blood - Brighton duo that play gritty lo-fi rock with attitude

Rhodes - Stripped back acoustic singer songwriter

Sivu - Idiosyncratic singer songwriter

Sophie Jamieson - Calm, atmospheric folk musician

Wolf Alice - Edgy rock band who take references from grunge and indie.

So those are the sixteen acts that the collective hive mind of the UK blogosphere are most excited about for 2014. So what does this blog think of it? There's some great acts on the list, although the only one we've featured on the blog this year has been Rhodes. We also love George Ezra, who's song "Budapest" is something pretty special, and Marika Hackman, whom we kept meaning to write about but just never got around to. And of the acts we weren't too familiar with beforehand, the soaring E M B E R S are the ones who tick all our metaphorical boxes.

In terms of what we would have liked to have seen on the list, we're slightly gutted that no Northern Irish artists made the longlist, especially considering that two out of our three selections were from here and especially considering the wealth of talent 'our wee province' has to offer. But I guess it was to be expected, given that (to the best of our understanding) The Metaphorical Boat was the only NI based blog to vote in the poll.

Maybe one year there'll be an artist from here who'll make the list, or there'll be a few more bloggers from here contributing, but for the moment we're glad to have been a part of something this brilliant. Hopefully a few of these artists will be doing excellent things in 2014.

The music blogs that took part in the voting were:

17 Seconds, A Pocket Full Of Seeds, All Noise, Alphabet Bands, Beat Surrender, Both Bars On, Brapscallions, Breaking More Waves, Brighton Music Blog, Cat From Japan, Daisy Digital, Details Of My Life, Don’t Watch Me Dancing, Dots and Dashes, Drunken Werewolf, Eaten By Monsters, Echoes and Dust, Electronic Rumours, Faded Glamour, God Is In The TV, Gold Flake Paint, Hearty Vibes, I Love Pie, In Love Not Limbo, Just Music That I Like, Killing Moon, Like 1999, Little Indie Blogs, Love Music : Love Life, Music Broke My Bones, Music Liberation, Music Like Dirt, My Band’s Better Than Your Band, My Day By Day Music, Not Many Experts, Peenko, Pop Dodger, Repeat Button, Scientists Of Sound, Scottish Fiction, Skeletory, Sleep In Music, Some Of It Is True, Sound Influx, Sounds Good To Me, Sounds Of Now Music, Sweeping The Nation, The Blue Walrus, The Devil Has The Best Tuna, The Electricity Club, The Evening’s Empire, The Mad Mackerel, The Metaphorical Boat, The Sound Of Confusion, The Underclassed, The VPME, This Must Be Pop, Thoughts On Music, When The Gramophone Rings

The Metaphorical Boat's Top Songs of 2013 - 40-36

Here's the songs from numbers 40-36 in the countdown. This part features two fantastic Northern Irish artists with very different musical outputs (piano pop vs trance-rock), one of the biggest dance singles of the year, some psychedelia, and an artist whom I'm surprised is not the biggest superstar on the planet.

I mean seriously, how the heck is Janelle Monáe not a bona fide global international pop star when the similarly diverse Bruno Mars is never off the radio? It's beggar's belief. 

But anywho, on to the countdown: 

40. Fryars - The Power

39. Janelle Monáe - Dance Apocalyptic

38. Best Boy Grip - Runaway

37. Avicii - Wake Me Up

36. A Northern Light - Kill It

The Metaphorical Boat's Top Songs of 2013 - 45-41

Up next in the countdown, we have the songs ranked 45-41. This part features Aussie indie-pop, minimal techno-meets-string quarters, liquid drum & bass, and a garage-rock song that features that hallowed instrument we all caused irreparable damage to as 8 year olds - the recorder. 

45. Clean Bandit - Mozart's House

44. Crash And The Coots -  Don't Kill Bugs

43. Major Leagues - Endless Drain

42. Fred V & Grafix - Basilisk

41. Parquet Courts - You've Got Me Wonderin' Now

The Metaphorical Boat's Top Songs of 2013 - 50-46

Running a music blog is probably the closest we will ever get to being a time traveler. Or at least that's how it can feel near the end of the year on The Metaphorical Boat. Having already visited the future in the form of our Tips for 2014 list, over the next few days TMB will be counting down the blog's top 50 songs of 2013. There will be songs that have featured on the blog, songs that didn't feature on the blog, and songs that really should have featured. Hopefully there will be a few songs here that will float you Metaphorical Boat.

We start with the songs from 50-46 on the list. This part features one of the biggest selling singles of the year, one of the UK's biggest rock bands, the first two Northern Irish artists on the list (of 9 that made the cut), plus a band that I like to think of as "the demented Lightning Seeds":


50. Daft Punk ft Pharrell Williams & Nile Rodgers  - Get Lucky



49. Little Bear - Killer



48. TeamRKT - Break Out



47. Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know?



46. Outfit - House on Fire