The 10 best albums of 2015
This week we're taking a look at the best of 2015, both in culture, sports, and a whole lot more.
Read all of our Best of 2015 coverage.
Here are our ten favorite albums of the year:
10. Pile - You're Better Than This
Pile is difficult. The Boston band defies description. They've had one minor, and I mean minor hit, in Prom Song, a song that came off their last album Dripping. (Which I think is probably the best album of the last half decade.) They no longer play Prom Song, and on You're Better Than This, they recorded an addendum that not so subtly mocks the fans who would come to their show and demand the guitar solo from Prom Song. (To be fair to those fans, it's a really freaking great guitar solo.)
You're Better Than This is more difficult than Dripping, more confrontational. Songs switch tempo and time signatures spontaneously. Lead singer Rick Maguire screams some lyrics, sings others, speaks sometimes. There's a song on the album called [Expletive] The Police that's a sweet, acoustic number. It's weird. Yet at the end of the year, this difficult, confrontational album was the one I spent the most time listening to. (Spotify's Year in Music told me so.) The album has a way of digging in under your skin, challenging you, but when you get it, there are few things more rewarding. Wait for the breakdown in Mr. Fish and see if it grabs you. If it does, watch out. -- NS
Song to listen to: Mr. Fish
9. Jamie xx -- In Colour
Electronic music came to a crossroads this year. It was a genre that had lost its way, riddled with bro culture and Mountain Dew-fueled drops and whatever the hell Skrillex was doing before Diplo came in and saved him. Then Jamie xx came along with In Colour and reminded me of everything I once liked about the genre -- the ability to hop around genres, the finding of a perfect groove, the excitement about finding new sounds and putting them together in some wonderful sonic collage.
Artists are already taking the sounds of this album and applying it to their own songs (ahem, Justin Bieber), which is all well and good, because I trust that Jamie xx will just move on, and start blazing a trail all over again. -- NS
Song to listen to: I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)
8. Drake -- If You're Reading this It's Too Late
In 2014, Diddy punched Drake in the face outside of a nightclub over a song and got away with it scot free. In 2015, Meek Mill (rightfully) accused Drake of using a ghostwriter after Drake didn't tweet his album link, and Drake nearly ended his career with two diss tracks. One of them was nominated for a Grammy. Let that sink in.
It was the rebrand of rebrands: Drake grew a beard, started lifting weights, got a few tattoos (not in visible places, you know, nothing too crazy), said no more bullying, and ever since he's been making haters absolutely sick.
If You're Reading This It's Too Late was both the hallmark of this rebrand and a display of dominance; he suggested we pay for a mixtape full of throwaway verses he probably didn't even write about how much richer and more famous he is than all of us, and we agreed without a moment's hesitation. That's the power of Drake now. He's got this undeniable, gravitational pull, and we're just floating around in his orbit. You think he's too vulnerable in his writing? Shut up. You think he's too self-absorbed? Whatever. You think he's too brash? Try stopping him then. -- MP
Song to listen to: Know Yourself
7. Tame Impala -- Currents
Tame Impala's album Currents may be the most beautiful album ever recorded about an awful breakup. It's not beautiful in the way you might expect a breakup album to sound, either; this isn't Elliott Smith. Kevin Parker dropped his guitar for this album, focusing on building a lush album of bass and synths, exploring R&B, classic rock and pop to build an album that, above all else, sounds fantastic.
The album hits its magnificent climax on Love/Paranoia, a sad and direct apology to the one who got away. "I've heard those words before /Are you sure it was nothing? / Cause it made me feel like dying inside" he sings, before closing the song: "Girl I'm sorry / Babe I mean it / Babe I'm sorry." It's not Shakespeare, but it tells you everything you need to know, doesn't it? -- NS
Song to listen to: Love/Paranoia
6. Vince Staples -- Summertime 06
Rap music is a lot about output now. You put out mixtapes, as many as you can manage to record, uploading them on Soundcloud and Datpiff until someone, maybe, hopefully notices you. Even when that happens, projects are rushed out, deadlines met, the public fed. So it was refreshing and exciting to see Vince Staples take his time with Summertime 06, a massive, ambitious double LP that provides the best rap origin story since good kid, m.A.A.d city.
The album is moody and dark and expansive, but what holds the whole thing together is Staples' sharp eye and perspective, which he never loses over the course of 20 songs. If you're going to make a major label debut in rap in 2015, this is the way to do it. -- NS
Song to listen to: Norf Norf
5. Miguel - Wildheart
R&B came roaring back this year, with The Weeknd becoming a household name, Prince releasing an album, and Ne-Yo charting. I mean, Janet Jackson came back with a single. It was a big year for music to play in the bedroom. And yet I loved no R&B album this year as much as I did Miguel's Wildheart. Not as nihilistic as The Weeknd's Beauty Behind The Madness, Wildheart had the sexiness, yes, but the album still had a soul.
Don't be confused: This is an album about sex. But Miguel can celebrate that sex. There's love here, too. A little bit of that can go a long way. -- NS
Song to listen to: Hollywood Dreams
4. Future -- DS2
After a highly publicized split from the mother of his son, Ciara (whom he cheated on, for the record), Future had a mammoth run in 2015 while circling the proverbial drain. Nothing seemed to have meaning anymore, so he felt free to do anything. And did so, free of judgement.
This all came to a head on Dirty Sprite 2, which sounds like when you're out partying and trying to convince yourself that you don't need her anyway. That you don't need anyone.
It's Future doing just about anything to numb the pain, and refusing to admit that he's spiraling out of control. Less than a minute into DS2, he's already wasted and he's already cuckolded you, too. Didn't even take his Gucci flip flops off. And you know what? He didn't even enjoy it.
Without modulating or censoring himself at all, Future finally earned his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200. And it's fire top to bottom. -- MP
Song to listen to: Stick Talk
3. Sufjan Stevens -- Carrie & Lowell
Carrie & Lowell will never have the devoted following that Sufjan Stevens' ambitious Illinois has. It isn't grand enough, didn't capture the hipster zeitgeist in the way Illinois did. That's too bad, because Carrie & Lowell may well be remembered as Stevens' masterpiece, a spare, chilling album that allows us to listen in on Stevens reckoning with the death of his mother, which took place in 2012.
If this sounds like a drag, I promise you it's not. Carrie & Lowell is full of sorrow, yes, but there is real beauty and hope here, as well as some of the finest melodies ever recorded by Stevens, or anyone really, in a long time. I have spent hours with this record, days even this year, and felt no more depressed having done so. I felt only appreciation, and hope, and love. Listen to it. -- NS
Song to listen to: Should Have Known Better
2. Kendrick - To Pimp a Butterfly
(Photo by Scott Roth/Invision/AP)
Kendrick Lamar released his label debut to wide acclaim in 2012. He became a critical darling, but rather than follow the pattern and give us more of what we thought we wanted, three years later – without warning – he dropped this acid jazz freakout on our heads. One that we had no earthly clue that we needed.
It's dense, and almost nine months on I still feel like I haven't finished unpacking it, but I do know that To Pimp A Butterfly is an important album. An important album made by who's probably this generation's most important rapper, completely fed up with the suffocating experience of being black in America.
And it is black. Good Lord. It is without a doubt, the blackest album that I've heard in the last 10 years. The opening track starts with a sample of Boris Gardiner's "Every N----- Is a Star", and features George freaking Clinton. It's so unapologetically and overwhelmingly black that whole tutorials were written on how to enjoy it if you were white. The long and short answer to that is to – for once – realize that your opinion is limited to your purview, shelve your pathological need to cram it into everything, have a seat, press play, and just listen. -- MP
Song to listen to: The Blacker the Berry.
1. The Internet - Ego Death
Yeah. We did.
To Pimp A Butterfly was without a doubt this 2015's most important album, but Ego Death was its best. The Internet filled the void left by Frank Ocean when he left us without a hand to hold (by the way, that album is now 5 months late) with this, their sophomore effort. Martian's masterful, rubbery production lays the perfect setting for Syd the Kid and her airy vocals, knowing just the right thing to say and just how to say it. It's a $10 therapy session. A prescribed dosage of charmingly relatable songs that make vexing complex matters of the heart seem, well, not so vexing. And maybe not all that complex, either.
And that simple beauty gives the record tremendous staying power. It's just as good each time you go back to it, and every time you'll find a new favorite song. – MP
Song to listen to: Under Control