Top 5

Here are Fingertips’ top five favorite current songs that can be found online as free and legal MP3s. Songs remain in the top five for a maximum of four months.

This had been a top 10 for the first 10-plus years of Fingertips’ existence. As of 2014, I have been featuring fewer songs per month, and so a more exclusive top-track feature seemed useful. Big hat tip to Nick Hornby, who immortalized the top five in High Fidelity, while also capturing a music culture that was just about to die only no one realized it at the time.

SONG	ARTIST	RELEASED
1. Joanna	Southern Boutique	2014
2. 900 Hands	Elskling	2014
3. Five Days NEW	Fossa	2014
4. Dead Rabbit Hopes	The Shoe	2014
5. Silver Linings	Jeni Valtinson	2014

updated 2 Oct 14

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Fingertips was founded in 2003 with the express intent of scouring the internet for the best free and legal MP3s, and reviewing said songs in idiosyncratic detail. Fingertips seeks out 21st-century music with heart and spirit, grounded in one sort of rock’n’roll lineage or another but with feet planted solidly in the here and now. Check the Artist Index for a sense of what you may have missed to date.

In 2014, the Eclectic Playlist Series was introduced as an adjunct feature—a monthly streaming playlist that willfully combines music from seven or more decades of music.

MP3s have grown less relevant culturally over the years but in the process it’s more relevant than ever to foster an environment for music curation on the internet that is humane and music-focused. Fingertips is not concerned with mass quantities of followers or viral sensations, and only sporadically tiptoes into the overheated world of social media. The focus here is on humans making quality music for other humans, not on trivial performative bullshit.

You can email Fingertips with suggestions, observations, or witty banter. But maybe you want to read the email guidelines first.

If you are a musician hoping to submit music, let me be firmer about that: please read the email guidelines first.

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