Ian T. McFarland

Los Angeles, CA

I don't even know how to answer that.

At 24-years-old, I found myself in a job that I hated, living with my parents, and not really seeing any end to the misery either was bringing me. It was just after I heard 'Wasted Days' by Cloud Nothings that I was able to convince myself that I could change these things. Making "I thought I would be more than this" my temporary mantra, the song gave me the perfect source and outlet for the frustration I had been feeling, and convinced me I could get out of it.

Jessie Ware just popped out of nowhere and had me on lock and chain for weeks. 'Devotion' is wickedly smooth, with an updated take on R&B that doesn't have to play dark like the way other great white hopes of the genre have to. The album is sexy, dancey, and impossible to stop listening to.

To be fair, I'd never given Nada Surf much attention before 2012, but 'The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy' showed me how stupid that mistake was. It's hard to imagine any songs that could so skillfully put me in a good mood. These songs are like the greatest uppers I can listen to.

Dan Deacon's last album, 2009's 'Bromst,' was a collection of music so audaciously original that it's still hard to believe anyone created it that isn't from the distant future. He finally followed it up with this year's 'America,' a strong album that just couldn't make a dent in the shadow of its older brother. That's fine, I just wish I'd realized that I shouldn't have expected anything else as good as 'Bromst.'

I saw M83 in an under-sized venue - only about a thousand fans could get in, which was not nearly enough, even for a small town in Kansas. But every hipster that was able to lay witness treated the moment as something special, and words cannot relate how quickly the floor fell out from underneath our feet when a saxophonist popped out for his solo at the end of 'Midnight City'.

Nerds have taken over most of Pop Culture, but this year they finally cracked Pop Music. Could anyone have predicted a couple of guys in ironic afros and eyewear dominating Top 40 radio the way LMFAO did with 'Party Rock Anthem' or 'Sexy and I Know It'? Could anyone have seen a foreign musician's stab at dubby and dancy flash music becoming the most watched video on YouTube, and going on to be a huge force on the radio as we saw PSY accomplish? Sex and Swagger don't mean as much as they used to, in fact, the opposite may be more important.

It's not a terrible song, but I really hate 'Call Me Maybe.' Yes, it has a very catchy hook, but other than its stringy synth line in the chorus, there's nothing remarkable about the song, either from a critical or pop perspective. Jepson's voice is just the right kind of sugary, but I'm not convinced I want to give her a second chance.