Almost Mainstream: The 2015 Mixtape
A handpicked selection of my favourite tracks of the past year.
Every December/January, I like to make a little mix of my favourite things in music from the past year. Sometimes it’s top songs, sometimes it’s top albums, sometimes it’s twelve tracks, sometimes it’s twenty. It really depends on what feels most relevant to my listening habits of the past year.
This year, it feels like the most honest thing to do is make a mixtape that’s roughly representative of my listening habits of the past year, which was largely listening to various mixes and individual tracks. I limited it to forty tracks because I find anything too long is just not worthwhile as a curated mix of the best of the best. If you desperately want more, I suggest my 2015 jams playlist on Spotify which sounds awesome on shuffle and includes basically every song I loved from the past 360-ish days.
As it is, these are the forty songs I’ve selected as the best representation of the past year. I followed the Said the Gramophone rules for year-end lists, which is: every artist only gets one song, and the songs are ones that I heard for the first time in 2015- a few came out at the tail end of 2014, but I didn’t catch them then.
By the way, my favourite albums of the year were: Carly Rae Jepsen‘s Emotion plus all its related singles, Grimes‘ Art Angels plus all her related singles/releases of the year, and Bleachers‘ Terrible Thrills Vol. 2. My other favourite artists were Drake (who released a good album, a good joint album, and good singles) and Justin Bieber (who released a strong slate of singles, but whose album still has too much filler). My favourite live artist was Black Spruce Bog, who had a great year from the Canada Winter Games through to The First Waltz and who also released the very excellent Confluence. My favourite song, period, was “Can’t Feel My Face” by the Weeknd. My favourite soundtrack was the season one playlist for Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, which is great all the way through and introduced me to “Cool It Now” by New Edition, which I’d somehow never heard before.
If you are interested, here are my previous year-end lists:
2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010
And here’s this year’s mix:
Stream:
Mixcloud | Download | Spotify (not all tracks are available on Spotify)
Tracklisting:
- Cree Dance Clearwater Revival — Mob Bounce
- The Peoples’ Champ — A Tribe Called Red feat. Hellnback
- Uptown Funk — Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars
- WTF (Where They From) — Missy Elliott feat. Pharrell Williams
- Adventure of A Lifetime — Coldplay
- Electric Love (Oliver Remix) — BØRNS
- Tete Jaune Road — Black Spruce Bog
- Cheer Up London — Slaves
- HOTFOOT — Doldrums
- Pedestrian At Best — Courtney Barnett
- FourFiveSeconds — Rihanna feat. Kanye West & Paul McCartney
- Bassically — Tei Shi
- Gold — Kiiara
- I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times) — Jaime xx feat. Young Thug and Popcaan
- Lean On — Major Lazer feat. MØ and DJ Snake
- Want To Want Me — Jason Derulo
- Unlock The Swag — Rae Sremmurd feat. Jace of Two-9
- Like Whoa — Logic
- Everyday — A$AP Rocky feat. Rod Stewart, Miguel, and Mark Ronson
- Old Love/New Love — Twin Shadow feat. D’angelo Lacey
- Run Away With Me — Carly Rae Jepsen
- I Wanna Get Better — Bleachers feat. Tinashe
- How I Want Ya — Hudson Thames feat. Hailee Steinfeld
- Bad Blood — Nao
- Can’t Feel My Face — The Weeknd
- Burial — Yogi feat. Pusha T, Moody Good, and TrollPhace
- Shutdown — Skepta
- Energy — Drake
- This Aint’ Toronto — Wasiu
- Where Are Ü Now — Jack Ü feat. Justin Bieber
- All My Friends — Snakehips feat. Tinashe and Chance the Rapper
- Middle — DJ Snake feat. Bipolar Sunshine
- King Kunta — Kendrick Lamar
- Don’t Wanna Fight — Alabama Shakes
- Moaning Lisa Smile — Wolf Alice
- Firefly — Hollerado
- Pretty Good Joke — Dan Mangan + Blacksmith
- ’Cause I’m A Man — Tame Impala
- The Feeling — Justin Bieber feat. Halsey
- Realiti — Grimes
Originally published at andrewkurjata.ca.