Haim struck a blow for guitar bands, Disclosure and King Krule shone, and solo stars like Miley Cyrus went the way of all flesh
Read the Observer critics' reviews of the year in full here
Sex and money have long provided pop with a steady rhythm section. That rhythm reached rubbery sub-bass frequencies this year. Pop music sang of sex (and hyper-sexualisation, and sexism) as never before in 2013, thanks to one former child star – Miley Cyrus – trying very hard to slough off one skin and reveal another, often in its entirety.
The ensuing fight about foam fingers and post-feminism, twerking and appropriating black culture was as salutary as it was vicious (when Sinéad O'Connor's mental health was dragged into the row). As for Cyrus, it helped sell over 500,000 copies of Bangerz (certified gold in November). That's peanuts to those who remember Madonna-money, but now counts as a hit. A kind of Harlem shake was needed to recalibrate the charts now that the bottom has fallen out of them too. So the RIAA, the US charts organisation, began counting an artist's YouTube views and streams towards their track's final sales figure. Closer to home, press releases to music journalists routinely filled up with statistics on views, likes, friends, followers, plays – anything that might, in the absence of a market for music, help to quantify how well their client might be doing.
In some cases this hype was deserved. Haim might have been the darlings of the press this year but that was because they were a terrific proposition, using the vector of harmonies to splice R&B with 70s soft rock. They laid waste, too, to a herd of ghastly old hobby horses about guitar bands being unmarketable and record sales only being tied to women's state of undress.
Kanye West may have a classic only-child's view of his own importance but it's bolstered by his admirable refusal to just shut up and be rich on his latest offering, the angry, searching Yeezus. Closer to home, Disclosure united dance snobs and chart-pop aficionados with their era-bending sound, one that exported very nicely indeed.
Meanwhile, the idea that selling lots more niche releases to a few people (aka "the long tail", or the indie hipster dream) would redefine the music industry in the digital age began to lose its sheen. Anecdotally it seems that record companies are shying away from signing new bands, due in part to the cost of "breaking" four people (as opposed to one singer). According to a recent book, Blockbusters, by Harvard Business School's Anita Elberse, the "big head" – or blockbuster release – rather than the long tail is still wagging the dog. Expect ever-sexier videos from big names in the year to come.
If you were to describe the music industry to an alien in "140 characters or less", "flogging people songs about coupling up" would still just about do it; now, as then. But what we think we know about the notional poles of commerce and authenticity came under some fire in a recent and fascinating BBC4 documentary. Blues America: Woke Up This Morning retold the story of the blues as one of fickle fashion, staying up all night to get lucky, and profiteering, rather than blind share-croppers emoting on diddley bows.
Perhaps the most lavish box set ever released came out this year: The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records 1917–1927. Urged into being by former upholsterer Jack White, it's a giant wooden suitcase lined in velvet, containing (among other artefacts) a book of walnut vinyl 12ins and a USB stick of 800 tracks. It documents a label that released the blues, country, jazz, folk – anything, basically, that might turn a buck for a furniture company who wanted to flog more of their record players. Unwittingly, Paramount captured the sound of early 20th-century America, and these essentially disposable ditties are now regarded both as art and indigenous roots music. What this tells us about the fate, in 100 years' time, of Cyrus's We Can't Stop (over 300,000,000 views) is, at present, unclear.
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