The Top Ten Albums of 2015

Our penultimate stop on our trek through the musical 5s is 2015, a year that gave us more than a few bonafide modern classics as well as some underrated gems I rediscovered on my listening journey. Overall, I'd say 2015 was a year where many of the up and comers who started the decade with guns blazing were able to settle into their role as the torch bearers of their respective genres, whether it be pop, rock, R&B or hip-hop. That newfound comfort in their place in the musical hierarchy helped them make some of the most confident and ambitious music of their careers. I would say that 2015 is majorly overshadowed by the looming presence of 2016, which is in my opinion one of if not the strongest year for music of the 21st century, but that shouldn't mean we can overlook any of these true gems. Without further adieu, let's count down the Top Ten Albums of 2015.

#10 A Special Episode Of - Open Mike Eagle (19 minutes, Alternative Hip-Hop)

One of the key tracks on Open Mike Eagle’s previous album, his artistic breakthrough, Dark Comedy, was the “Dark Comedy Morning Show”, a spectacular opening track which laid out the album’s core conceit, an exploration of Mike’s crippling anxieties juxtaposed with his remarkably clever, pop culture referencing sense of humor, and on this record, he gives you more of the same.  As a pure sequel to Dark Comedy, it works wonders, with the opening track in particular packing a real emotional punch while hitting you with several hilarious punchlines, even in the spoken word breakdown where he just speaks his mind about the state of television news over an icy sample.  The production on this album is very reminiscent of his last album, with buzzy synths and warped production, which as he references in one of the tracks, sounds a little bit like analog video game music. His signature, quietly sung hooks are getting more confident with every release, but truly this record is all about lyricism, and there’s not a weak performance from Mike here.  It’s a short project, feeling at times more like an addition to Dark Comedy as opposed to a standalone project, but its brevity allows it to be very digestible and lack a single second of filler, every bar hits hard with his conversational, relaxed flows.  The pervasive sense of dread and anxiety that permeates these laugh out loud songs creates an unsettling contrast that makes the record feel like little other hip-hop I’ve ever experienced.  The best Open Mike projects have a heavy, discernible influence from OME’s musical hero, MF Doom, and both the quirky beats and the relentlessly clever and frustratingly relatable bars all feel like hallmarks of the metal-faced legend, which is high praise.  A great follow up to a great record, part of his underrated hot streak.

Choice Cuts: "Dark Comedy Late Show" "Ziggy Starfish (Anxiety Raps)"

#9 Froot - Marina & The Diamonds (53 minutes, Synth-Pop / Singer-Songwriter)

One of my favorite subgenres is the melancholy pop album, and on her third outing, Marina delivers a modern classic of the genre, using her knack for catchy, quirky pop trifles to express her sense of self-loathing and feelings of being overlooked by the mainstream to great affect.  Marina’s first two albums were very unique pop records, her debut The Family Jewels was a very theatrical, Kate Bush inspired album of cabaret tinged piano-pop while her follow up, the concept album Electra Heart was an electro-pop album full of bangers that satirized the superficiality of pop stardom, and here she swerves again into an entirely new sonic palette, bringing the piano back into the mix with some more guitar-driven rock tracks to balance out her synthier moments.  The album has its fair share of danceable pop, namely the joyful, ebullient title song which sees Marina at her most lovably winsome, a sensual love song composed entirely of fruit metaphors, what could be quirkier.  However, many of the album’s shining moments see Marina take a more introspective view, penning somber ballads that show off her unusual vocal range, where she has both an earthy alto and a fluttery high soprano which she uses interchangeably to give each song a real sense of emotional scope.  These songs are earnest, to a fault, laying out all of her insecurities for everyone to see, but transforming her pain and anxiety into beautiful, relatable songs which are some of the most accessible in her catalog.  On this album she sheds all of her pretense and characterizations to reveal the true Marina and it makes for a very powerful listen.  When she’s not writing about herself, there are a few powerful bits of social critique, about the cruelty of humans and the inherent sexism in the way female musicians are categorized.  On her later albums her political edge would become more blunt, making some of her songs more hackneyed, but here it is artful and subtle.  While her first two albums may be more fun, this is the final evolution of Marina as an artist.  On her next album Marina would drop the “& the Diamonds” moniker and in a way re-debut as an artist (a much less fun one in my view), so this marks the end of her greatest era.  A fully ripened fruit ready to bite into and enjoy.

Choice Cuts: "Froot" "Can't Pin Me Down" "Savages"

#8 Beauty Behind the Madness - The Weeknd (1 hour and 5 minutes, Alternative R&B)

The Weeknd has always been an odd fit for a pop star, especially one as world-conqueringly huge as he is today, namely because he makes such dark, brooding music.  You don’t usually expect huge pop smashes to come from such a tortured figure, whose music seems to entirely revolve around his own deep-seated dissatisfaction with his cruel, womanizing lifestyle and laundry list of addictions.  These songs aren’t happy, they are pained and twisted, but the way he is able to present them into brilliant pop nuggets is a real talent.  Part of his magic is how incredible his voice is, with more than a little hint of MJ’s superb instrument in his own, but with less of a naive innocence and more of a world-weary grit to counterbalance the soaring falsetto.  This record also sports some really immaculate production, where the ballads are allowed to sound as grim and hollow as possible with echoing percussion, eerie synths and fuzzy guitars letting The Weeknd’s voice take center stage, where the more upbeat pop songs are tried and true synth-pop R&B bangers updating the Prince/MJ sound for the new millennium with a hint of hip-hop percussion.  The XO sound palette has been fully developed after his acclaimed series of mixtapes and solid if sometimes uneven debut, and here The Weeknd and his collaborators are clearly making a play for pop airplay (the features from Ed Sheeran and Lana Del Rey really show this, where the latter fts a lot better than the former), smoothing out some of his edgier musical qualities and putting a greater emphasis on hooks and balancing out the ballads with pop tunes, but oddly, The Weeknd’s lyrics are just a filthy and dark as ever, which makes for a fascinating contrast.  So many of these songs were major hits, and still get airplay today, going to show how this breakthrough album would go on to define the sound of pop and R&B a decade later.  This style was so influential to the next generation of artists, and you can hear its descendants everywhere today, but nobody does this brand of moody R&B pop with a sinister twist better than Abel himself.  His next albums would improve on this approach, but on its own, it’s a defining record of its era.

Choice Cuts: "Can't Feel My Face" "The Hills" "In the Night" "Often"

#7 25 - Adele (48 minutes, Pop / Soul)

One of the most indisputable facts of pop music is that every generation you get a performer who can deliver a ballad better than any of their peers.  A Celine Dion, a Whitney Houston, a Gladys Knight and so on, and Adele has been the undisputed queen of the slow song ever since her 2008 debut album, and I’d argue that no one has come close to snatching her crown since then.  Where her first two albums, 19 and 21 were pretty split between powerhouse R&B and adult contemporary ballads and more upbeat soulful pop jams, her third album doubles down on her status as the premier 2010s balladeer and she delivers a tight 45 minutes of gorgeous mid-tempo and slow songs in a variety of different styles, showing off her incredible voice.  Not one performance on this album is less than stellar, she is in truly unbelievable voice, dripping with emotional power and technique paired with a real soulfulness.  Adele and her collaborators deliver hit after hit in the songwriting department, from the widescreen cinematic Celine-esque sweep of a song like “Hello” to a classically soulful track like the nostalgic “When We Were Young”, packing sticky hooks and mindblowing performances.  While the other singles leap into slightly poppier territory, I personally feel that this album truly comes alive on its deep cuts, which haven’t been pounded into the brain by radio programmers, with her dabbling in new styles, like a drum-heavy “In the Air Tonight” styled rock ballad, a Phantom of the Opera meets Billy Joel piano ballad and an acoustic guitar led folk-leaning number, making this record feel both consistent in tempo, but varied in style.  No two songs are all that similar, which is the record’s core strength.  I don’t return to this as often as the magnificent pop-soul opus 21, but this is a more mature, polished Adele and if you’re in the mood for some graceful downtempo bliss, then this is the record for you.

Choice Cuts: "When We Were Young" "Hello" "I Miss You" "All I Ask"

#6 If You're Reading This It's Too Late - Drake (1 hour and 8 minutes, Hip-Hop / Trap)

So much has been said about the self-proclaimed 6 God Drake that it is genuinely hard to find a new angle to write about.  He is perhaps the most ubiquitous cultural figure of the past decade, at least in music. Whether you love him or hate him, you can’t say you don’t have an opinion about him.  Mine is tenuous at times, because there’s a good amount of his catalog that I genuinely enjoy, but at the same time, I find his ever-present monopoly on the music world to be exhausting and has helped homogenize the world of mainstream rap to a frustrating degree, let alone the fact that I’ve struggled to connect with any project of his after 2018, but whenever I throw this tape on I forget about how little I care for the Drake of 2025 and remember why we all fell in love with him in the first place.  This tape is just about everything you could want from a Drizzy Drake project, it’s got the exact right mix of bars on bars rapping Drake and soft trap-soul crooner Drake (about 70 / 30), it’s got a handful of absolutely killer verses and some brilliant, sparse and icy production from the OVO stable.  Many Drake albums are victims of their own bloat, they could almost always use some real editing, but here there’s not many, if any songs I would drop from here (maybe just the two PartyNextDoor collabs), with each song playing brilliantly off each other to create a state of the Canadian hip-hop union where Drake both brags about his endlessly lavish lifestyle of money, cars and hoes while also struggling with that lifestyle, finding an emptiness in his success and longing for the days of the come-up, no matter how challenging it was.  Drake’s pure rapping performances are some of the best in his career, really showcasing his Lil Wayne lineage with some fantastic punchlines and really insightful moments of glimpsing the real Drake, beyond the bravado.  Smartly, he only adds a very few guest verses, with just PND, Lil Wayne and Travis Scott showing up for support, and allowing the album to reflect just his own artistry, giving it a focus some of his other work lacks.  The album peaks very late, with the final three songs being three of the best in his entire career and showing that even if you’re tired of him now, his talent in 2015 was undeniable.  He might never be my favorite rapper, but there’s no denying there’s a reason for all his success.  He does what he does better than anyone else in the game.  Postcards from the top of the mountain.

Choice Cuts: "Jungle" "6PM in New York" "Legend" "You and the 6"

#5 HITnRUN Phase Two - Prince (57 minutes, Funk / R&B)

There are two kinds of final albums in a musician’s career, the ones that are planned to be the last and ones that aren’t, and unfortunately Prince’s last album is the latter kind, as unfortunately his Purple Badness would tragically pass the next year before he could follow this up.  Thankfully, this record sees Prince end his earthly career with some of his most vital, enjoyable music in years, a real return to his peak funky form.  After his brilliant 2014 comeback album, Art Official Age, where he delved deeply into the sounds of the modern era, updating his R&B chops for the internet era, he followed it up with HITnRUN Phase One, another album in a similar vein which was slightly diminishing returns, but in the same year as Phase One, he dropped Phase Two, which was even better than either of those previous albums, as instead of looking to the future, he looked to the past and delivered an old school funk album unlike anything else in his catalog.  This record is damn funky, in an almost pre-Prince style, it’s full of punchy horn arrangements, groovy bass licks and rocking guitar riffs that are reminiscent of a James Brown or even a Stevie Wonder record as opposed to his own more synthetic brand of 80s funk, there’s a real 70s revivalism flavor here, especially in his use of horns and it’s a totally new look for Prince.  From a songwriting perspective, it's his most catchy set of tracks in years, with the choruses all hitting hard and his lyrics are as raunchy and fun as ever, while also peppering in some more socially conscious moments.  The real standout here is the opening track, “Baltimore”, which is entirely different from the R&B and funk revivalism of the rest of the tracklist, it is a deeply impactful protest song about the brutal police killing of Freddie Gray. Smartly, Prince doesn't go for a rage-fueled rocker or a harrowing dirge, he channels his anger into an bright, defiant pop-rock song similar to his Around the World in a Day era, but with a marching drum beat. The powerful "if there ain't no justice then there ain't no peace" refrain and the brilliant lyric "peace is not just the absence of war" show just how tuned into the times Prince was, and that even in his final months he was still a forward looking artist. It is a song both of its time and beyond it, sadly the lyrics about needing to regulate guns and racialized police violence are still relevant today, perhaps even more so.  Overall, this album is a true celebration of what Prince’s late career could have been, the established veteran delivering steamy, charming R&B gem after gem, but sadly that’s not the world we live in.  While some may have wanted a Blackstar style send-off from Prince like the one we got from Bowie, I think this is much more emblematic of his career.  It’s poetic that Prince ended his career with this, a profoundly fun, joyful album which sees the man doing what he does best, laying down some serious funk.  Remember the man for this, cause until the day he left us, he was still the funkiest mother on the damn planet.

Choice Cuts: "Baltimore" "Xtralovable" "Big City" "Screwdriver"

#4 Vulnicura - Bjork (58 minutes, Electronic / Ambient)

Björk never makes the same album twice, that’s part of what makes her catalog so deeply fascinating and endlessly revisitable.  By 2015 though, it seemed as if Björk had stopped truly pushing forward with her music, and instead was content to play in the musical sandboxes she’d already invented, with her last two projects, Volta and Biophilia, moreso honing the electronic, microbeat laden texture-play of her groundbreaking early 2000s work than trying something completely out of the ordinary.  When it comes to Vulnicura it’s not her sound palette that has changed, as there are hints of Vespertine and Homogenic all over this record, from its gorgeous, haunting string arrangements to washes of synths and skittering percussion, but it is the subjects she writes about.  While most of her post-Vespertine work looked outward at the environmental world as opposed to inwards, this is Björk at her most vulnerable and open, writing a challenging, heartbroken record about the brutal dissolution of her fifteen year marriage to avant-garde filmmaker Matthew Barney, with whom she had a daughter.  The songs on this album are lengthy, most clocking in around seven or eight minutes, and see Björk singing, as powerfully and hurt as she’s ever sounded, about the end of what she believed would be the rest of her life, not with anger but with an overwhelming feeling of depression and exhaustion, weighed down by her emotional baggage.  This is a heavy, difficult album but the songwriting is some of her all-time best, wringing every drop of emotion from her haunting voice, which plays beautifully off the stirring string arrangements and frenetic beats.  Many of these songs feel akin to the gothic rock epics of The Cure, wrought emotional dirges elevated by a sense of graceful, grandiose musicality, but instead of post-punk guitars it’s an orchestral electronic swirl.  The emotional clarity of this album is startling, especially for an artist who is traditionally very cagey with what her songs actually mean, you can nearly feel every romantic touch she is extolling, every harsh word exchanged between the couple.  When she sings a line like “Is there a place where I can pay respects for the death of my family”, your heart shatters.  The album’s centerpiece is the career-highlight “Black Lake”, a ten minute meditation on the rage she felt in the immediate aftermath of the break-up, which is one of the most cathartic pieces of music I have ever encountered.  This is not an album to be passively listened to, it is intense but rewarding.  A late career stroke of genius from an artist who never ceases to grow.

Choice Cuts: "Family" "Black Lake" "Stonemilker"

#3 Currents - Tame Impala (51 minutes, Synth-Pop / Psychedelic R&B)

A major shake-up in sound is usually one of two things for an artist, a move born out of desperation or of real creative inspiration, while the former can be a fascinating glimpse into an artist trying to stop the skid of irrelevance or failure (a “Trainwreckord” in the words of a wise shadowy figure), the latter is one of my favorite kinds of albums, because they are always unexpected and usually delightful.  Currents is one of the best about-faces in music of the past decade, seeing indie rocker Tame Impala trading in his guitar for a keyboard and delivering a smooth, lush album of danceable, vibey synth-pop after two albums of fuzzy Beatlesque psych-rock revivalism.  This record is immaculately produced, not a note feels out of place, in a way it’s sort of like indie’s answer to the age of yacht rock but instead of glistening keys and soulful voices you’ve got walls of soft synths, funky bass and Kevin Parker’s wispy sometimes nasal croon which is more of a texture instrument than a real lead.  Parker’s songwriting on this album is hypnotic, usually finding a single killer groove and riding it through the song, but never letting it get stale, adding new flourishes on top of it or delivering red hot solos whether it be on the bass or on the sequencer.  Vibey is a word that’s thrown at a lot of music these days, it’s kind of a catch-all word for music that sounds good in the moment (usually of the low-key variety), but doesn’t really stick with you.  This album is the epitome of what a vibey record should be, cause it creates a real atmosphere of retrofuturistic indietronica with layers upon layers of gorgeous instrumentation, but nearly every song has at least one killer hook or riff that will stick in your brain forever.  I could sing you at least three of these songs note for note (instrumentally, not just lyrically), that’s how sticky this thing is.  That’s the opposite of vibey.  The funk elements are the album’s strongest points, with the bass on this album paving the way for more dance-influenced indie to explode in the ensuing years, this is the blueprint for crossover indie/dance-pop, and still a decade later I don’t think it’s been surpassed.  While not every song is an all-timer, I certainly prefer the heavier grooves and more pop-rock feeling numbers than the wispy ballads which could use a more soulful, engaging singer than Parker is, there’s always something to love no matter the song.  This is a record you can just get lost in, and aren’t those the best kinds.  It’s a vibe, in the best sense of the word.

Choice Cuts: "Let It Happen" "The Less I Know the Better" "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" "Eventually"

#2 E*MO*TION - Carly Rae Jepsen (46 minutes, Dance-Pop / Synth-Pop)

Who’s the best pop diva to come out of the 2010s is a contentious question with a lot of feasible answers.  Is it the heart-on-her-sleeve songwriter Taylor Swift?  Is it the candy-colored extravaganza of Katy Perry?  The avant-garde art-pop of Lady Gaga?  The Caribbean princess of high energy dance tracks Rihanna?  The emotive balladeer Adele?  All strong answers, but my answer would likely be a slightly more offbeat choice, Carly Rae Jepsen.  Many folks might only know her from the titanic smash hit “Call Me Maybe” from her breakout album Kiss, but if that’s true, you are missing out on some of the best pop music of the decade.  Carly Rae’s much anticipated follow-up to the electro-pop hit Kiss was this, E*MO*TION which saw Carly go in an entirely new direction of 80s influenced synth-pop that took all the candy-floss hooks for “Call Me Maybe” and applied them to a much stronger, more timeless sonic palette with even better songwriting than her last project.  It’s hard to qualify what makes a perfect pop album, but in my honest opinion, there are few pop albums that hit the dizzying highs of this record, with each song feeling anthemic in its sheer sing-along-ability.  These are world-beating choruses she is writing, it’s impossible to hear a song like “Run Away with Me”, which I’d put in the same conversation as Springsteen’s “Born to Run” in terms of songs you need to scream at the top of your lungs driving down the highway with the person you loves.  Aesthetically, Carly goes full on into the retro 80s sound with walls of synths and keys along with some fantastic saxophone riffs and glorious Prince inspired bass-licks, but it never feels like a retread.  Carly imbues these old sounds with new, youthful life.  Her vocals always sound perennially young, like a teenager discovering the highs and lows of real love for the first time, even though she’s in her thirties, and it works wonders for these songs, which are very much about how it feels to fall in love for the first time.  The wide-eyed innocence and naivete of these songs makes them so charming and joyful, you yourself feel as if you are experiencing the rush of these emotions along with Carly, and while she’s not an acrobatic vocalist, her ability to sell these emotions so vividly is truly remarkable.  The production here is spotless and cool, sounding so vital and colorful across every single song.  There’s no weak moment here, even the two smoldering quiet storm ballads are high points showing off that Carly doesn’t need a dance beat behind her to make a great song.  The consistency on display here is astounding, twelve expertly crafted pop songs that should have all been smash chart hits.  The fact that she wrote so much good material there was room for seven bonus tracks and nine more on a B-Sides album that are all of the same A+ quality shows she was working at a true creative high, but showed real restraint by cutting it down to truly the best twelve songs possible.  This is a blockbuster smash that for some odd reason missed the American charts all together, which pisses me off to no end.  When all manner of bad pop gets airplay and a gem like this doesn’t hit it big, I feel upset on her behalf, but at the same time, it makes me feel just that more special for not having to share this with the entire world.  For us CRJ devotees this is the pop music bible, and if you listen to this and don’t feel high on the joys of pure unadulterated pop, you might not be alive.

Choice Cuts: "Run Away with Me" "Boy Problems" "Let's Get Lost" "Emotion" "Making the Most of the Night"

#1 To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar (1 hour and 18 minutes, Conscious Rap / Progressive Hip-Hop)

Dissertations have been and will continue to be written about Kendrick Lamar’s third album, because this is one of the densest, most nuanced albums I’ve ever encountered, but not once does that stop you from being able to enjoy every single second of this project.  Kendrick’s artistry lies in the details of his music, and no other album in his discography has the sheer amount of layers in each song, with the entire album attempting a wildly ambitious deconstruction of blackness in America through his own lens in a mere eighty minutes.  It would be nearly impossible to find another album that is such a thorough embrace (and critique) of what it means to be Black in America in the year 2015, Kendrick is able to examine it from every possible angle from colorism, identity politics, political and police violence, spirituality, the importance of connecting with the African motherland and a wholehearted embrace of Black musical culture in all of its various aspects.  Musically, Kendrick has never painted with a more rich, beautiful sonic palette.  Every song is dripping with a real live, ebullient energy from the musicians and producers, creating a sort of musical gumbo with elements of chaotic free jazz, greasy gut-bucket funk and guitar-driven bluesy rock over top of throbbing 808 beats and a choir of Black voices.  Musically, this album is an expression of joy which is at odds with the heaviness of the lyrics, where Kendrick both extols the joys of embracing his Blackness but also wades through the challenges and is able to smartly pontificate on various issues, while also tearing into himself for his own perceived inadequacies.  Nowhere is that contrast better seen than the twin flame songs “i” and “u”, with the former being an explosive funk-rock banger where Kendrick flips the Isleys in order to deliver a sermon of self-love while the latter is a harrowing, jazzy dirge where Kendrick pushes his voice to the brink, screaming in a drunken haze about his own feelings about him being unable to practice the morals that he preaches.  Smartly, Kendrick barely features anyone else, only the incredible Rapsody gets the chance to spit a verse, as lyrically he has never been stronger.  The way he utilizes the voices of his collaborators, not on verses but on choruses and segues is remarkable, with each contribution adding to the African-American experience he is attempting to distill.  The contributions from Pharrell, Snoop Dogg, Bilal, Anna Wise and Ronald Isley add a real texture to the proceedings and play a great counterpoint to Kendrick’s own voice.  While the preceding good kid, m.A.A.d city is a masterpiece of pure storytelling, this sees Kendrick operate on another level, emulating his musical hero Tupac Shakur in the way he makes the personal political and vice versa.  The album concludes with an imagined conversation between Kendrick and Pac through archival interviews and you can see how much Kendrick hopes to inherit his legacy as a real changemaker in hip-hop, and with this album I'd argue he surpasses his idol. His flows are deeply creative, no other rapper is willing or able to do the things Kendrick does with his voice, contorting it into various characters like a great actor, and his energy and righteous rage never lets up for a second, imbuing each word of his poetry with a palpable urgency.  Even the lesser songs on here would be career-defining masterpieces in the oeuvre of a lesser artist, but that’s just Kendrick.  When he’s operating at his peak, no one can even come close.  This is some of the most vital music I’ve ever encountered, a true work of divine inspiration and it hasn’t aged a day.  It’s still the sound of the future.  It’s deeply hard to put how brilliant this album is into words, and I’m sure I’m not the right person to do so, but every time I listen I am moved in a way very little else is able to.  Kendrick’s future projects would maintain his artistic excellence, but it would be impossible to top this.  This is beyond hip-hop, it is a genuine revelation.

Choice Cuts: "Wesley's Theory" "The Blacker the Berry" "u" "i" "How Much a Dollar Cost" "Alright"

And with that we've made our way through 2015! Ten years later and these records have grown to be true modern classics. The highly anticipated Best of 2025 is coming soon. Let me know below if there's anything you think I missed, or any thoughts of your own on these brilliant projects!

Happy listening!