This time of year brings us a plethora of Best of 2014 and Worst of 2014 lists on a variety of subjects. Here, we’ll attempt to give readers an overview of many of those lists covering subjects ranging from music, movies and television to tech, bloopers, sports and trolling.

Here’s a look at how the year 2014 shaped up here at RealLifeSTL.

Without further adieu, we present you. . .

The Best and Worst of 2014

 

Beyoncé is a force to be reckoned with for sure. He are the 17 Most-Liked Beyoncé Photos of 2014. There were also at least 13 times when Beyoncé was a mystery in 2014. She gave an epic performance at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards. Queen Bee is also currently on top of the Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful Celebrities. In 2014, we saw the Queen Bee as being magical and perfect a lot of times and as The Daily Beast pointed out, we also saw that Beyoncé is human.

Speaking of Forbes, Justin Bieber topped a list from Forbes of The Most Overexposed Celebrities of 2014. Justin Bieber also has terrible fashion sense and took a tumble while showing off his skateboarding skills. President Obama has much better fashion since and he shows it off in 2014: A Year In Photos from the White House. While we’re on the topic of photos, here are 86 Viral Images From 2014 That Were Totally Fake.

Taylor Swift had a huge year. Her latest album, 1989, beat out the Frozen soundtrack with 3.66 million album sales since October to be the Top-Selling Album of 2014. Taylor received rave reviews for the album and especially the music video for the hit “Blank Space”. She also performed the song on the 2014 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.

Way back on January 6, Florida State beat Auburn to win the 2014 BCS National Championship. The Seattle Seahawks dismantled the Denver Broncos to win Super Bowl XLVIII. Budweiser had one of the best 2014 Super Bowl commercials with “Puppy Love”. The University of Connecticut pulled off the rare feat of having both their men’s and women’s basketball teams win NCAA National Championships. The San Antonio Spurs beat the Miami Heat in five games to win the NBA Championship. The Los Angeles Kings took the Stanley Cup on a tour in 2014. California Chrome won the 2014 Kentucky Derby. Germany beat Argentina in extra time to take home the 2014 World Cup trophy. The San Francisco Giants beat the Kansas City Royals in seven games to be crowned the 2014 World Series Champions.

T.J. Oshie put on a thrilling performance against Russia in the 2014 Winter Olympics and thus was named the 2014 St. Louis Sportsperson of the Year by InsideSTL.com. The site also named their Best Moments of the 2014 St. Louis Sports Year and Worst Moments of the 2014 St. Louis Sports Year.

 

Deadspin continued being a major player in the sports journalism world with long-form stories about NFL cheerleading, being Tony Gwynn’s bat boy and Gamergate. Read the best Deadspin long-form stories of 2014. Deadspin also put out a lost of their favorite sports moments of 2014 and named the 2014 Deadspin Bear of the Year.

Guardians of the Galaxy will end the year as the Highest-Grossing Movie of 2014 with more that $333 million. The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay – Part 1 was the only movie anywhere close, and it was still $30 million+ behind. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was a very distant third while The LEGO movie came in fourth and Transformers: Age of Extinction rounded out the top five. The box office receipts, of course, don’t tell you what critics thought were the best and worse films of the year. The folks over at Empire had Boyhood as their Best Film of 2014, a movie that pulled in $24 million during its theater run. Will Leitch and Tim Grierson over at The Concourse also gave the best movie nod to Boyhood. The reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes also gave Boyhood the top spot. TIME ranked The Grand Budapest Hotel as the best movie of the year. IMDb’s MOVIEmeter rated The Interview as the Most Popular Feature Film Released in 2014.

TIME gave the Worst Movie of 2014 award to Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore for Blended, which I actually enjoyed.

The 20/20 Diet by Phil McGraw was the top-selling book of 2014 over on Amazon. The Fault In Our Stars was the top-selling Kindle eBook on the site.

TIME named the Amazon-original Transparent as the Top TV Show of 2014. Game of Thrones was the Most Pirated TV Series of 2014. Salon named a moment from How To Get Away With Murder as its Top TV Moment of 2014.

NPR named Rixton’s “Me and My Broken Heart” one of the Top 10 Top 40 Songs of 2014. We featured their cover of Arian Grande’s “Problem” in the July 8th edition of The Billboard Top 5: Covered. Entertainment Weekly said “#Selfie“ by The Chainsmokers was the worst song they heard in 2014. Any song about the most overused and annoying word of the year has to be terrible. Robin Thicke, Foster the People and Neil Young also had songs in the top five on that list. Many people also hated Florida Georgia Line’s “Sun Daze”, including this guy who wrote a semi-rant kind of disguised as a review of “Sun Daze”. It’s a horrendous collection of noises and words described as a song, like several of their recent singles.

On the other side of terrible, Luke Bryan’s Crash My Party was the top country music album of 2014 on iTunes. Carrie Underwood had the top-selling country album on Amazon. Rolling Stone called 2014 “a breakthrough year for country’s LGBT community” as Kacey Musgraves won Song of the Year for “Follow Your Arrow” and Ty Herndon and Billy Gillman revealed some things about themselves they hadn’t publicly before. Garth Brooks made his long-awaited return to country music with the release of Man Against Machine and a record-breaking tour that included four amazing shows in St. Louis. He also made his music available digitally for the first time an unveiled the best music deal of 2014.

Food and beverages are of course a highlight of any year. Taco Bell came out with a breakfast menu. Mashable put the Taco Bell Waffle Taco atop their Weirdest Food of 2014 list. Pizzeoli in Soulard, Grapeseed and Sugarfire Pie were among the new places to get nods in St. Louis Magazine’s 2014 St. Louis Restaurant Thumbnail Awards. Local brewery Side Project had their Saison du Blé Batch 2 made Draft Magazine’s Top 25 Beers of 2014 list, the only local one to do so. After brewing out of Perennial for over a year, Side Project opened Side Project Cellar in Maplewood earlier this year. Peacemaker Lobster & Crab Co. came in second on Ian Froeb’s Best New Restaurants of 2014 list for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

There was lots to be happy about in the world of technology in 2014. In Geek’s Top Tech Surprises of 2014, they cite the time NASA emailed a wrench to an astronaut in space and the crazy new development at Tesla Motors from Elon Musk, among other things. Wearble devices became a big thing in 2014, like the Pebble Steel. The MIT Technology Review named Google Glass, Bitcoin and Sapphire iPhone Screens as a few of the low points in technology in 2014. Gamergate was a low point in the technology world for sure. Uber also had its own low points. Wired has a list of those and other technology stories no one saw coming in 2014, like Apple unveiling the Swift programming language and Facebook paying $19 billion for WhatsApp. Here’s another list of 2014’s Worst Moments In Tech.

Startups are still going strong. ReadWrite has a list of Startups that Made Life Better In 2014. Funding is flowing into startups wanting to make it easier for you to consume information. Apps are big business and here are the apps that defined 2014, like HBO Go.

We hope you had an enjoyable 2014 and are ready to knock 2015 out of the park. There is a super-elaborate game coming out next year. Here are 26 movies to look forward to in 2015. 15 smart design books to inspire you, ten books to read in 2015 and eight books that will become movies in 2015.

Also, tickets go on sale January 30 to see Taylor Swift at Scottrade Center on September 28.

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