In what’s become a procrastination-abetted tradition, we’ll take this first day of 2015 to cast one last glance back at 2014, counting down what people have been reading on Slicing Up Eyeballs over the past 12 months. This time around, it’s news about The Cure, Annik Honoré, New Order, The Replacements, R.E.M. and more Best of the ’80s results posts.
As you can see from the list of Top 20 most-viewed posts below, the wrap-up of the Best of the ’80s album polls — the controversial best-of-the-decade ranking — topped the year, and a few of the individual year posts from 2013 got enough traffic in 2014 to make the list again.
The big puzzler on this year’s list: U2’s Red Rocks anniversary at No. 2, a 2013 post that seemingly got a ton of pageviews, yet Google Analytics cannot account for them. Maybe Bono just magically inserted it onto the list while he was delivering our copy of Songs of Innocence?
We marked our fifth anniversary in February, but, coming off a huge 2013, this last year was down for us, traffic-wise, in large part because personal and professional obligations brought a sharp decrease in the number of posts. Still, in 2014, we saw 892,000 unique visitors from 217 different countries — Is it possible the one person from Turkmenistan who visited the site in 2013 is the same one person from Turkmenistan who visited in 2014? — and registered more than 2.5 million pageviews
So thank you all for sticking with Slicing Up Eyeballs in 2014 and reading, watching, listening, commenting and sharing — and stay tuned for what we sincerely hope will be a bigger and better 2015.
Slicing Up Eyeballs’ most-viewed posts of 2014:
1. Slicing Up Eyeballs’ Best of the 1980s: The Top 100 albums from 1980-1989 (1/6/14)
2. Milestones: U2 played historic Red Rocks gig 30 years ago today — watch ‘I Will Follow’ (6/5/13)
3. Watch: The Cure covers The Beatles’ ‘Hello Goodbye’ for Paul McCartney tribute (9/9/14)
4. Annik Honoré, girlfriend of Ian Curtis/Les Disques du Crépuscule co-founder, 1957-2014 (7/4/14)
5. Video: Iggy Pop joins New Order to cover Joy Division classics at Tibet House benefit (3/11/14)
6. Decades after ‘SNL’ ban, The Replacements returning to 30 Rock to play ‘Tonight Show’ (9/5/14)
7. R.E.M. releases 131-track Warner Bros. rarities set, puts ‘Chronic Town’ on iTunes (5/20/14)
8. Watch 30-minute documentary on New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ (1/7/14)
9. Top 100 Albums of 1989: Slicing Up Eyeballs’ Best of the ’80s — Part 10 (11/25/13)
10. Top 100 Albums of 1980: Slicing Up Eyeballs’ Best of the ’80s — Part 1 (3/8/13)
11. Top 100 Albums of 1984: Slicing Up Eyeballs’ Best of the ’80s — Part 5 (7/1/13)
12. Kate Bush performs first concert in 35 years: Setlist, photos, video of ‘Cloudbusting’ (8/27/14)
13. Top 100 Albums of 1985: Slicing Up Eyeballs’ Best of the ’80s — Part 6 (8/1/13)
14. Morrissey cancels rest of U.S. tour, blames opener Kristeen Young for getting him sick (6/10/14)
15. Reissue of XTC’s ‘Skylarking’ with ‘corrected polarity’ finally coming to CD (2/24/14)
16. R.E.M.’s 50-track ‘Complete Rarities: I.R.S. 1982-1987’ due out digitally next month (4/21/14)
17. Watch: BottleRock Festival pulls the plug on The Cure during ‘Why Can’t I Be You?’ (6/1/14)
18. Tears For Fears confirm handful of U.S. live performances in September (8/29/14)
19. James announces new album ‘La Petite Mort,’ streams new song ‘Frozen Britain’ (2/24/14)
20. The Cure announces new album ‘4:14 Scream,’ live DVDs, new ‘Trilogy’-style tour (2/3/14)
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Slicing Up Eyeballs’ most-clicked of 2013: The Replacements, Peter Murphy, Best of the ’80s
- Slicing Up Eyeballs’ most-clicked of 2012: R.E.M., The Cure, Dead Can Dance, Depeche Mode
- Slicing Up Eyeballs’ most-clicked of 2011: Nirvana, U2, The Smiths, Pixies, The Cure
- Best of 2010: The Cure dominates Slicing Up Eyeballs’ most-viewed posts of the year
- The Cure, Pixies, Morrissey, Depeche Mode top list of most-viewed stories of 2009
- Morrissey, Cure, Depeche Mode, Pixies top first 6 months of Slicing Up Eyeballs
I know that there where some events this year to get excitted about, but overall it seemed like a slow year for this type of music.