Songs of 2015: My top 20
What a year it’s been for music. A choatic world politically leads to an aggressive and pointy response from musicians, as it should. Some chose to release overtly political music, while others deigned to cloak their feelings in metaphor and narrative.
Whatever the motive of the music, 2015 continues recent years’ theme of singles over albums. The streaming culture in music has become more and more influential, to the point Apple leapt onto the bandwagon this year with their originally-named “Apple Music”. Spotify continues to struggle to balance a growing pantheon of users unwilling to pay for the privilege with record labels and musicians demanding, rightfully, they be paid for their work.
But I digress. Again we’re seeing artists preferring to release music one track at a time, with albums performing poorly relative to individual songs. With that in mind, it’s time to talk about my personal top twenty songs of the year.
20–10
In the interests of time, let’s first go through those songs that didn’t quite make my personal cut for the top ten. Note that I have … quite a specific musical taste, so most if not all hip-hop, rap, metal, etc., did not grace my ears this year. (I’m working on that.)
#20: The Go! Team — “The Scene Between”
A catchy little number, harking back to The Go! Team’s original sound of dreamy, electric, and colourful indie.
#19: Carly Rae Jepsen — “I Really Like You”
Okay, this one’s something of a guilty pleasure. But for an unashamed pop song, it really didn’t get much better in 2015.
#18: Doe — “Avalanche”
Grungey punk from London with purpose. A gritty, catchy, and crucially really really good song.
#17: SOPHIE — “VYZEE”
SOPHIE released a whole load of off-kilter electronic music this year, but this track was the best if one of the more saner-sounding.
#16: Shaun Wasabi — “Marble Soda”
Sitting at around five million YouTube hits, I was one of the many captivated by the California-based wünderkid’s nimble fingerwork.
#15: Jack Ü— “Where Are Ü Now?” (feat. Justin Bieber)
As far as dubstep goes, Skrillex is up there; adding Diplo and Justin Bieber to that mix tempered the craft into one of the most prolific earworms of 2015.
#14: Susanne Sundfør — “Kamikaze”
Taken from one of her best works to date, “Kamikaze” is a slice of heartfelt indiepop written through with foreboding synth work.
#13: EL VY — “Paul is Alive”
Taking the piss out of the “Paul is dead” urban legend (Google it), Matt Berninger’s side project’s best song just sounds comforting and peaceful, somehow.
#12: Algiers — “Irony. Utility. Pretext.”
Foreboding and dark, Algiers manage to encapsulate the current tensions in the United States within a stampede of heavy, relentless post-punk.
#11: Years & Years — “King”
Honestly, if “Real” were released this year it would make it into the top ten. As it is, “King” manages to be a solid effort from Olly and company.
The Top 10
#10: Shamir
“On the Regular”
He may not be totally new to the world of music, but Shamir well and truly landed in 2015. Debut major-label single “On the Regular” announced the arrival of his brand of off-the-cuff pop that is at once jaunty and accessible.
#9: Sufjan Stevens
“Should’ve Known Better”
Sufjan Stevens’s individual tracks are difficult to review by themselves, as most of the time they play a role in providing his albums flow, helping them to tell one coherent story. With “Should’ve Known Better”, we’re treated to Sufjan’s now iconic acoustic prowess and breathy, fragile vocal, in a song that retroactively laments his own reaction to his mother’s death.
#8: Tame Impala
“Let it Happen”
At almost eight minutes long, this is a behemoth of a track from the Australian songsmith. About nature taking its course, it combines the staple psychedelic sound now synonymous with the project with a seemingly endless electronic breakdown that pulls everything together. It jitters around like a mad thing as everything slowly degrades into the end of the song.
#7: Zomby
“SURF I”
Surf. Surf. Surf. Surf. It’s not exactly War and Peace, but the first track from Zomby’s Let’s Jam!! more than makes up for it by being a total banger. It sort of feels like a song that a haunted jukebox would play in a post-apocolyptic nightclub somewhere in Brixton. Like much of the album, it’s a good old-fashioned slice of possibly-haunted house music, which is exactly what Zomby consistently delivers.
#6: CHVRCHES
“Clearest Blue”
While Every Open Eye isn’t as fully-formed and well-crafted as their debut, CHVRCHES still know how to craft a perfect synthpop song. With “Clearest Blue”, the Scottish trio produce one of the finest all-round songs of the year. The breakdown in the latter half of the song especially gets the hairs standing. Lauren’s voice is perfect for this song, that slight Scottish lilt adding to the song’s hopefulness.
#5: Major Lazer
“Light It Up” (feat. Nyla and Fuse ODG) [Remix]
Another song on the list almost purely because it caught me like an uppercut. Major Lazer’s 2015 album Peace is the Mission is full of absolute choooonz, but none piqued my attention quite like this one. It’s a remix of the edition of the song selected for the LP, but the album version is barely half as good as the single. That sax section could make a priest dance.
#4: Courtney Barnett
“Pedestrian at Best”
Courtney Barnett’s early music, I must say, was something of an acquired taste. The Australian indie champion absolutely refuses to drop her Melbourne twang, but that’s exactly what makes “Pedestrian at Best” so perfect — a song about not getting carried away with popularity, sung by someone rightfully being thrust into it.
#3: Ghostpoet
“Off Peak Dreams”
Ghostpoet (Obaro Ejimiwe to his mates)’s Shedding Skin is hopeful without really meaning to be. An album full of reminders that life is fleeting, full of reminders that London is a bastard of a place to survive in. With “Off Peak Dreams”, Ejimiwe pins down the feeling of depression and nonchalantly rolling with the punches: “Honestly, I’m kind of lost / No one knows what morning brings / Maybe a couple beers in your arm / But it’s well-known it ain’t near enough”.
#2: Everything Everything
“Only As Good As My God”
A song from this record — my favourite release of the year, it should be said — was always going to appear on this list. Everything Everything did one of the best jobs of encapsulating how 2015 knocked us all for six: Terrorism, the lurch to the right, and, in non-album track “Only As Good As My God”, kettling. With some fantastic vocal tweaks, frontman Higgs presents a song that’s almost like a poetic painting, a garble of lyrics presenting a dystopian future that we’re actually living in right now. It’s also perfectly layered, and endlessly catchy with one especially great riff running through the whole song.
#1: Jamie xx
“Loud Places” (feat. Romy xx)
With such a wide array of themes, genres, and executions in my top twenty songs of the year, it might seem odd to place Jamie xx’s breakthrough single on the top spot. After all, there’s no massive political statement being made in “Loud Places” — instead, Romy xx sings about her quest to find someone to take her sadness away. It’s a personal song, but what makes it a great song is Jamie xx’s musical direction. Idris Muhammad’s “Could Heaven Ever Be Like This” is heavily sampled, and ties all the ideas and soundscapes together excellently.
“Loud Places” slots perfectly into In Colour, Jamie xx’s stunning debut record, which harks back to the jungle sound prominent in the 90s. With this song in particular, he also pays homage to his primary group The xx — perhaps a little more electronic than their output, but the hallmarks of his previous work with the trio are obvious. “Loud Places” is all-round a stunning track from a stellar album, and makes me very excited to hear future work from both Jamie and his band next year.