twostepcubchart's Best of 2014: Part Two - #90 to #81...

It's time for round two of my year-end recap of the biggest hits on my weekend personal chart this year. You can catch up on part one by clicking here...

#90 - "We Are Tonight" - Billy Currington
         from the album We Are Tonight (2013)
         Highest Peak: #20 (one week)
         Weeks on the chart: 18

Currington had a wild 2013; as his "Hey Girl" ended up Billboard's Country Single of the Year (it ended up #81 on my year-end chart), he pleaded no contest to charges stemming from an altercation with a boat captain who was stalking his property with tourists. Moving onward, he returned to #1 on the country chart with this suburban-country rocker.

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#89 - "Birthday" - Katy Perry
         from the album Prism (2013)
         Highest Peak: #8 (two weeks)
         Weeks on the chart: 13

While Prism didn't prove to be the hitmaking powerhouse that Teenage Dream was, Katy was still making good bank, with five songs in the top-40 ("Roar" came in at #55 last year). Also, she absolutely ruled in the extravagant music video department. "Birthday" was the most sugary pop of them all.

#88 - "Chocolate" - The 1975
         from the album The 1975 (2013)
         Highest Peak: #17 (two weeks)
         Weeks on the chart: 17

The British indie-rock band were pretty low-key but their debut album spun off six singles in their home country, including this mid-tempo record about a bad relationship that the singer can't find the will to leave.

#87 - "She Keeps Me Warm" - Mary Lambert
         from the EP Welcome To The Age Of My Body (2013)
         Highest Peak: #19 (two weeks)
         Weeks on the chart: 16

Last year Macklemore & Ryan Lewis almost made the top 100 with their marriage equality anthem, "Same Love", featuring a then-unknown lesbian singer/songwriter, Mary Lambert. Mary went on to take her contribution to that record to form its own song, bringing that chorus to an even more personal and intimate space.

#86 - "Afraid" - The Neighbourhood
         from the album I Love You (2013)
         Highest Peak: #12 (one week)
         Weeks on the chart: 14

This California dark-pop band had the #9 song on my 2013 year-end list with "Sweater Weather" (that song almost made this year's list as well). I wrote "This sounds like any of the bands from the 90s that also spun off one great hit never to be heard widely from again." Let me amend that to "bands from the 90s that spun off one great hit and a pretty good follow-up never to be heard from again." Shoegazing for the mainstream.

#85 - "Automatic" - Miranda Lambert
         from the album Platinum (2014)
         Highest Peak: #17 (three weeks)
         Weeks on the chart: 15

In a country music landscape that was dominated by frat boys and pinup male models, Miranda won single and album of the year at the CMA awards, and she's up for three Grammys next year for this song. And she did it without having to "dumb down" her music. Give me Miranda over Carrie any day. (She was on 2013's year-end chart at #71 with "Mama's Broken Heart".)

#84 - "Rewind" - Rascal Flatts
         from the album Rewind (2014)
         Highest Peak: #27 (two weeks)
         Weeks on the chart: 18

It's hard to think that this lite-country-pop trio, whose first hit came at the dawn of the millennium, is now "old guard" on country radio, they nonetheless scored their 29th top-10 country hit with the title track from their ninth studio album, which includes two songs co-written by a then-unknown young woman named Meghan Trainor.

#83 - "Bartender" - Lady Antebellum
         from the album 747 (2014)
         Highest Peak: #17 (two weeks)
         Weeks on the chart: 17

Another successful country crossover trio who placed at #62 last year with "Downtown", are back with another marginally "country" hit that's a right fit for the hip urban South. It's now climbing the adult-pop chart as we enter the new year.

#82 - "Boom Clap" - Charli XCX
         from the albums The Fault In Our Stars (Original Soundtrack) and Sucker (2014)
         Highest Peak: #25 (two weeks)
         Weeks on the chart (so far in 2014): 19

British singer/songwriter Charlotte Aitchison had a supporting role in Icona Pop's "I Love It", my #27 song of 2013, as well as Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" (coming up a little later), but she got her "star turn" on this echoing track from the teen cancer romance movie The Fault In Our Stars.

#81 - "Love Don't Die" - The Fray
         from the album Helios (2014)
         Highest Peak: #17 (two weeks)
         Weeks on the chart (in 2014): 13

The pop/rock band returned this year with a somewhat harder sound that doesn't seem like something that would go over in that bar in the video, but still pretty good.

That's all for today....I'll be back tomorrow with the reigning country king, the "male Adele", and my queen.