My Favorite Albums of 2015, Part 1
The beginning of a new year is upon us, and with it the promise that someone out there cares about my opinions on pop culture as long as I rank them in a list format. To compile this list, I considered every album released in 2015 that I had listened to in full, which unfortunately wasn’t as many as I would have liked. Instead of consuming full albums, I usually just cherry-pick a few singles to listen to and ignore the rest. As a millennial, I just don’t have the time to listen to fifteen songs when I could be sexting, Snapchatting, or composing emoji-filled conspiracy theories (JET ✈️ FUEL ⛽ CAN’T 🙅 MELT 🔥 STEEL 🏢 BEAMS 😨).
You may notice that some of the albums on this list are actually EPs, and correspondingly have shorter reviews. I saw fit to rank EPs over full-length albums because albums often suffer from poor editing. Sometimes that fourth or fifth version of the same song with the same yawny vocals just isn’t necessary, Lana Del Rey. I prefer an EP with five fantastic tracks to an album with ten fantastic tracks and five clunkers.
Here’s numbers 6–10, and keep an eye out (or don’t) for the top 5 in a week or so.
10. Fifth Harmony — Reflection
Reflection is what tween girls have deserved since the beginning of time, and it’s a damn shame that they never got an album like this until 2015. I’ve previously written about Fifth Harmony’s emphasis on financial independence and self-confidence in their single “BO$$,” and Reflection offers more of the same pop-feminist jams. On the title track, they croon “Ooh where you from? Must be heaven / You’d be rich if looking good was your profession / Think I’m in love ‘cuz you so sexy / Boy I ain’t talking about you, I’m talking to my own reflection.” Subtlety is not 5H’s strong suit, but it’s not needed when they’re making lyrical references to Lil’ Terio and Instagram filters. Vocally, none of them stand out from each other, but they provide soulful R&B harmonies and sassy clap-backs in equal measure. Destiny’s Child is a clear influence: “Brave Honest Beautiful” opens with a “Bootylicious”-inspired roll call, and they dedicate an entire song to Mariah Carey. 5H seem to be singing from an ivory tower high in Girl Land, where you’re always Worth It, anyone can whine like Rihanna if they believe in themselves, and every selfie gets at least 100 likes.
9. SOPHIE — Product
Anonymous music producer SOPHIE doesn’t make pop so much as he carves up pop like Swiss cheese, leaving holes everywhere: the vocalizations are minimal and the lyrics are repeated into oblivion. SOPHIE uses only synthetic instruments: no drum, no guitars, just bass and electronic squeals and slurps. Just like this is barely pop, Product is barely an album: at eight tracks, it’s just long enough to be entrancing and short enough to be unsettling. Each track sounds like only half of a song. SOPHIE abandons traditional song components like bridges and verses and offers instead flanging and disarming syncopation. This is a cobbled-together pop monster, and the transition from “Bipp” with its disco vocals and sunny synth to the deep bass and echoing, ominous rattles of “Elle” feels like descending into a techno swamp. SOPHIE clearly enjoys playing with societal roles and expectations: he’s a male producer calling himself SOPHIE, playing with hyper-feminine vocals, and selling his album packaged as a dildo-like ‘silicone product.’ Product is, indeed, a product of commercialism, and “Lemonade” has been featured in a McDonald’s advertisement for that very product. The brightness of his music is always superficial and hollow underneath: “Lemonade” unnervingly turns into a hyper, K-pop-esque song underscored with dissonant, terrifying bass. The biggest surprise on the album is its closer, “Just Like We Never Said Goodbye,” which is undoubtedly the most traditional track and could easily be a deluxe track from Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION. Both stripped-down and hyper-produced, the track ends before its final chorus, leaving the album in hollow silence.
8. Imad Royal — Cycles (EP)
Imad Royal’s twitter bio reads “I sing, I write, I make beats. Minimalist.” and his debut EP is a testament to the DC-based performer’s versatility. His collection of five songs is soaring and atmospheric, incorporating sounds as diverse as chains rattling, thunder, and pan flutes. Methodically, he wraps layer upon layer of bass, drum, and vocals until the drop feels achingly inevitable and yet completely unexpected.
7. Halsey — Badlands
The Badlands, a dystopian futuristic landscape, serve as a metaphor for Halsey’s mental state while composing her synthpop/R&B debut album. Comparisons to Lana Del Rey and Lorde are frequently and aptly made, but Halsey sings from a nastier, darker place. Murky, muted guitars fuse with trip-hop beats to form songs that feel like a smoky exhale and punch straight to the gut. When her voice isn’t slipping too close to Indie Girl Voice territory (and it happens more often than it should), Halsey emotes everything from mournful melancholy to spitfire rebelliousness. Halsey is most compelling when she is her own subject — she wastes one too many songs lamenting over sad boys in tight jeans. She positions herself as the subject of her own mythology, an almost supernatural being outside of human control — “I’m a wanderess, I’m a one night stand / Don’t belong to no city, don’t belong to no man / I’m the violence in the pouring rain / I’m a hurricane,” she sighs in “Hurricane.” Backing herself with a hymnal chorus on “Castle,” she declares “I’m headed straight for the castle / They wanna make me their queen / And there’s an old man sitting on the throne / And he’s saying that I probably shouldn’t be so mean,” cementing her status as a pop revolutionary.
6. Frankie — Dreamstate (EP)
“No I don’t wanna be your best friend, just let me be your new obsession,” coos Frankie simultaneously to an imaginary paramour and to listeners worldwide. She sings with a wide-eyed poptimism and winking cheekiness that make her self-referential requests for fame on “New Obsession” and money on “Gold” seem totally ironic, you guys, don’t even worry about it.
Originally published at claremulligan.tumblr.com.
