“In 2014, the hype monster is bigger and hungrier than ever. The buzz cycle is starting earlier and the leaks are coming faster, and the anticipation surrounding the biggest releases is a maelstrom of internet soliloquies and social media hysteria. We’ll see if 2014 can handle the hype.”
Parker Evens
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Parker Evans is an economics senior and Mustang News music columnist.
With a new year comes new music and TV shows. Here’s a rundown of 2014’s most anticipated entertainment.
2014 album preview
We witnessed a year in music that saw the album cycles converge for a wide range of huge artists. We’re probably going to have to wait more than a year for another album from Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend and Daft Punk, but the hype monster is always hungry. Already, the buzz is building around this year’s releases, and although there’s still much to be announced, the hype monster will make do with the news we have so far.
The elephant in the room, of course, is the highly-anticipated summer release from Kanye West. It would seem the now-infamous Yeezus sessions yielded more material than we saw on one of last year’s sparsest, best-edited records. Kanye has already confirmed that Rick Rubin will reprise his role as producer, but it’s still not certain that the sequel will carry over the original’s aggressive energy. In a December interview, he put his recent discography in Springsteen terms, saying he considers Yeezus to be his Nebraska, and that his next album would be more like Born in the U.S.A., which is a comparison tailor-made to make fans equal parts excited and confused.
After something of a return to form with 2012’s Wrecking Ball, Springsteen himself will release his new album, High Hopes, in January and the Springsteen-worshipping Minneapolis outfit The Hold Steady is planning both a covers EP and a full album release for 2014. Since the underrated Heaven is Whenever, The Hold Steady has been futzing around between a solo album from lead singer Craig Finn and covering fictional songs about bears and fair maidens for “Game of Thrones.” This 2014 release will be their most important since Boys and Girls in America, as fans wait to see if Finn and company continue to mellow out or if they try to regain the harder rock edge of their earlier material.
Southern rock fans should get excited for a new Drive-By Truckers album in March. Lead singer and the South’s poet laureate Patterson Hood says English Oceans will take a louder, more punk turn, reviving the anger and politics of their early 2000s material.
Rap fans have a lot to look forward to as well. Although nothing official has been announced (yet), an official label debut from Chance the Rapper is highly anticipated and the buzz surrounding one of the fastest rising stars in the business shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who heard last year’s excellent Acid Rap.
If it comes to fruition, 2014’s pièce de résistance may very well be the sequel to good kid, m.A.A.d City from Los Angeles’ Kendrick Lamar. Last year, Lamar defended his status as one of the world’s premiere rappers with a handful of stellar guest verses, but fans are hungry for the follow-up to the best rap album of the past five years and it will be surprising if Lamar doesn’t at least get in the studio this year.
Across the country in Brooklyn, El-P announced a sequel from his collaboration with Killer Mike, Run The Jewels. The original set the bar high, but RTJ2 is almost guaranteed to be a solid ball of energy, hopefully with the backing of a major label this time around. And of course, OutKast will be reuniting for the festival circuit this summer, but a new album might be too much to ask for.
In 2014, the hype monster is bigger and hungrier than ever. The buzz cycle is starting earlier and the leaks are coming faster, and the anticipation surrounding the biggest releases is a maelstrom of internet soliloquies and social media hysteria. We’ll see if 2014 can handle the hype.
2014 TV Preview
Over the past few years, it’s become fashionable to say that we’re in a golden age of television. An argument can certainly be made that over the last decade, better stories are told week to week than on the silver screen, but the shows that gave television its legitimacy as a platform for storytelling are coming to a close.
We’ve already seen the departure of “Breaking Bad,” which will remain the gold standard for the medium for years to come. Its brother in arms, “Mad Men,” is entering its final season, and like “Breaking Bad” before it, AMC has decided to split the final season into two parts. The first half will air this spring, but fans will have to wait until 2015 for the highly anticipated series finale.
On the other side of premier cable dramas is HBO’s unstoppable “Game of Thrones.” After last season’s climax produced shockwaves around the Internet, and the series will be practically unavoidable as we draw nearer to its return in the spring.
Netflix’s recent foray into original programming has produced quite a bit of critical acclaim, but their biggest popular success is the soapy Capitol Hill drama “House of Cards.” In the new Netflix tradition, the whole season will be released at once, so you can spend the second season’s premiere date (Valentine’s Day!) gorging yourself on political intrigue and Kevin Spacey’s southern accent.
With the possible exception of Comedy Central, FX is the network most obviously putting college-age males square in its sights. This year, “Wilfred” will enter its fourth and final season and the black hole-dark comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” might be retiring after this year’s 10th season. The network would definitely feel the loss of Sunny, a show that remains impressively strong late into its lifespan, but its animated spy comedy “Archer”, returning this month, is developing a cult following.
Among the major networks, an era will come to a close with the series finale of “How I Met Your Mother” in May. The staying power of “HIMYM” after 200 episodes is a throwback to a time when long-running sitcoms were programming staples, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that a spinoff is in the works. Although no official dates have been announced, “How I Met Your Dad” will follow a similar premise and take place in the same universe as the original, but with an all-new cast.
Across the street at Fox, a juggernaut is returning. Like so many action heroes before it, “24” will be coming back to make one last run at it. Set in London, the series is rebooting for a 12-episode season with Kiefer Sutherland reprising his role as special agent Jack Bauer. With the short season order, the current plan is for the season to maintain the traditional structure by unfolding over a single day, but the individual episodes will be less restricted in their use of time.
If the golden age of television is to persist, viewers and networks alike will be faced with some interesting choices. TV budgets are increasing, HBO-quality shows are no longer the exclusive domain of premium cable, and networks are beginning to realize original content from Amazon and Netflix present a credible threat to their business model. The landscape of television is starting a major process of change, but viewers are going to be left with plenty of appealing options.