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The Best Songs of 2015

Clockwise from top left: Kamasi Washington, Carly Rae Jepsen, the Weeknd and Justin Bieber.Credit...Top left, Lauren Lancaster for The New York Times; Top right, Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times; Bottom row, Chad Batka for The New York Times;

The music critics of The New York Times share their picks for the best songs of the year.

1. Skrillex and Diplo with Justin Bieber “Where Are Ü Now” (MadDecent/OWSLA/Atlantic) Only Justin Bieber’s popularity could have made this electronic oddity a Top 10 hit. The song seesaws between plaintive and pulsating with a track that laces subtle changes into its repetitions. Instead of a big radio chorus, there’s a nagging, irresistible sonic squiggle of a hook: a snippet of Mr. Bieber’s voice, subliminally organic, that holds the song together. (See the interactive interview)

Skrillex and Diplo - “Where Are Ü Now” with Justin Bieber (Official Video)Credit...CreditVideo by Jack Ü

2. Bob Dylan “I’m a Fool to Want You” (Columbia) Romance is a tragic, decaying, obsessive ruin as Bob Dylan, more or less crooning, takes on one of the very few songs whose writers include Frank Sinatra.

3. Missy Elliott featuring Pharrell “WTF (Where They From)” (Atlantic) “Man, I’m so futuristic”: The long-awaited return of Missy Elliott plunges right into the cultural fray, with a tribal-modern beat and quick, syncopated, allusion-heavy thoughts on cultural exchange, sexuality and personal moxie.

4. The Weeknd “Can’t Feel My Face” (XO/Republic) Brooding and then buoyant, in a pop tune with a poisoned core, the Weeknd sings about cocaine addiction as a love affair that’s alluring precisely because he knows it could destroy him. (Read the profile)

5. Lana Del Rey “High by the Beach” (Interscope) Can lassitude be passionate? Over churchy organ chords spattered with trap percussion, Lana Del Rey perfects her blend of sorrow and sulk, flinging some final barbs as she withdraws into alienation. (Read the review)

6. Kelela “Gomenasai” (Warp/Cherry Coffee) The title is Japanese for a deferential “I’m sorry,” but the song has Kelela dominant, in a shadowy seduction set to electronic sounds and silences that throb and whoosh like slow breathing.

7. Madonna “Unapologetic Bitch” (Boy Toy/Live Nation/Interscope) Another of Madonna’s precise self-branding phrases almost seems to sing itself over a reggae track, while she gives herself the sneering last word on a breakup.

8. Sophie “Vyzee” (Numbers) The producer Sophie makes music that’s synthetic, ruthlessly succinct, action-packed and zany: a brainy 21st-century cartoon idea of pop. (Read the profile)

9. Boots “I Run Roulette” (Columbia) With a vocal under siege from relentless drums and jolts of guitar, the pressure — rhythmic, timbral, psychological — never lets up in this cryptic but ominous gallop through assorted paranoias. (Read the profile)

10. Jlin featuring Holly Herndon “Expand” (Planet Mu) Jlin, the D.J.-producer Jerilynn Patton, adds her own kind of depths and hollows to the dry, head-snapping abstractions of the ratchety Chicago dance music called footwork — and, in this track, quotes from “Enter the Dragon”: “When he contracts, I expand.”

1. Drake “Hotline Bling” (Cash Money) Spacious and fresh, a song that you can step into and make your own — if not by digital intervention, then by simply listening. (Read the critic’s notebook)

2. Carly Rae Jepsen “Run Away With Me” (Schoolboy/Interscope) The three-and-a-half minute radio romance (a touch longer on the album version) isn’t dead. A saxophone tone not found in nature only helps. (Read the profile)

3. Remmy Valenzuela “Por Qué Me Ilusionaste?” (Fonovisa) The great young Mexican corrido singer refines his control over the romantic ballad.

4. Colleen Green “Pay Attention” (Hardly Art) One of the year’s tightest songs, about the inability to focus: checkmate.

5. Ben Monder “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” (ECM) An improvised duet as big as a universe on an old standard by the electric guitarist Mr. Monder and the drummer Paul Motian, recorded before Motian’s death in 2011.

6. Titus Andronicus “Dimed Out” (Merge) The truest emotional surge of an album that’s something like a hundred emotional surges in a row.

7. Aye Nako “Human Shield” (Don Giovanni) Radical self-criticism and self-acceptance, as elegant and direct as a landslide.

8. Ought “Beautiful Blue Sky” (Constellation) A truly great gradual-hypnosis crescendo song of the year, and what’s it building toward? Optimism, even if the singer’s tone contradicts it.

9. Karen Clark Sheard “Sunday A.M.” (Karew/eOne) A pre-eminent gospel singer delivers an apotheosis of the slow groove.

10. Grimes “Flesh Without Blood” (4AD) A pop geneticist, experimenting with recombinant strands of hooks and moods, leaving them slightly imperfect and giving herself over completely to none; here she gets the proportions right.

1. Big Sean featuring Drake and Kanye West “Blessings” (G.O.O.D./Def Jam) Success is contagious.

2. Rich Homie Quan “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh)” (Think It’s a Game) Smooth and bubbly and greasy and tart: This was the year’s most deceptive pleasure.

3. Drake “Legend” (Young Money/Cash Money/Republic) Or “Energy.” Or “10 Bands.” Or “Know Yourself.” Or “You & the 6.” The era of Paranoid Drake is upon us.

4. Jidenna featuring Roman GianArthur “Classic Man” (Wondaland/Epic) A pop-minded take on grimy Atlanta and jubilant Los Angeles hip-hop that preaches the values of aesthetic conservatism while sneaking in slick street talk. Baffling and wonderful.

5. Adele “All I Ask” (XL/Columbia) At the top of Schmaltz Mountain, Adele has planted a Streisand-sized flag. (Read the profile)

6. Alessia Cara “Wild Things” (Def Jam) Thanks to Alessia Cara, the new teenage rebellion is both pensive and ecstatic. (Read the profile)

7. Keith Ape featuring JayAllDay, Loota, Okasian & Kohh “It G Ma” (Hi-Lite) Pure rambunctiousness, from the blatantly pilfered Southern rap motifs to the absurdist lyrical imagery. (Read the profile)

8. Fetty Wap featuring Remy Boyz “679” (RGF/300) Or “Trap Queen.” Or “My Way.” Or “RGF Island.” Or “Again.” In a year of increasing fragmentation, Fetty Wap was practically his own genre. (Read the critic’s notebook)

9. Empire Cast featuring Yazz and Serayah McNeill “Drip Drop” (Columbia) One of the year’s most sinuous and convincing club anthems, hamstrung only by the inconvenient fact that it exists primarily in the fictional universe of “Empire.”

10. Rico Richie “Poppin” (La Familia) The best kind of old-fashioned tough talk: focused not on what you do, but on how what you do makes lesser folks feel.

11. Justin Bieber “Sorry” (RBMG/Def Jam) Turns out Justin Bieber’s surest path to redemption is via club-minded dancehall-pop.

12. Jana Kramer “I Got the Boy” (Elektra Nashville) A song about watching your old love grow up and move on that manages to sound neither regretful nor nostalgic.

13. Yo Gotti “Down in the DM” (CMG/Epic) Less a song than a string of mumbled, whispered come-ons and frustrations about flesh pleasures in the digital age.

14. Shawn Mendes “Stitches” (Island) Vine star makes good with low-key slice of handclap pop.

15. Dave East “Momma Working” (Mass Appeal) A hard punch of pure 1995 — morbid and detailed about the labor and spoils of the drug game, at least until mom comes home.

16. Carly Rae Jepsen “All That” (Schoolboy/Interscope) Oh, just a terrific take on quiet-storm soul from a singer who seems to be perennially searching for a style but is really just great at many of them.

17. Post Malone “White Iverson” (Republic) Rap became R&B, and there was hardly any resistance, but what about when rap becomes folk?

18. Skepta “Shutdown” (Boy Better Know) So thorough is the grime resurgence that it’s tough to distinguish between the boasts in this song based on fact and the ones that are just fantasy (for now, at least).

19. Chris Janson “Buy Me a Boat” (Warner Bros./Warner Music Nashville) An anthem about the pleasures of working-class daydreaming, full of sly humor and even more sly politics. (Read the review)

20. Brockhampton “Dirt” (Fool’s Gold) The newest Southern rap weirdos come with a spasmodic, spooky posse cut.

1. Kendrick Lamar “Alright” (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope) The song’s defiantly hopeful refrain became a rallying cry at Black Lives Matter protests, but the verses harbor a more internal struggle — and some of Kendrick Lamar’s most inspired showboating as a rapper. (Read the profile)

2. Jamie xx Featuring Young Thug and Popcaan “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” (Young Turks) Most of Jamie xx’s solo album, “In Colour,” dwelled in a glorious realm of raves past, but Young Thug’s irrepressible work on this track was a jolt from our own time. (Read the Q. and A.)

3. Björk “Black Lake” (One Little Indian) The slow-beating heart of “Vulnicura,” Björk’s gravely dignified post-heartbreak album, proceeds like a sacred rite, with elegant strings, devastating admissions, a pointed finger and a potent video (directed by Andrew Thomas Huang). (Read the profile)

4. David Bowie “★” (ISO/Columbia) A dose of brooding, spooky composure from a man who knows the score, underscored by serious improvisers like the drummer Mark Guiliana and the multi-reedist Donny McCaslin.

5. Kamasi Washington “Change of the Guard” (Brainfeeder) For those who couldn’t fully get behind the messy grandeur of “The Epic,” the breakthrough triple album by the tenor saxophonist Kamasi Washington, this 12-minute track distilled all of its strengths. (Read the critic’s notebook)

6. Jason Isbell “24 Frames” (Southeastern/Thirty Tigers) The best song on Jason Isbell’s “Something More Than Free” — an album not hurting for good songs — is this resolute hymn about what happens when fate upends your plans and leaves you standing amid the wreckage.

7. Chris Stapleton “Tennessee Whiskey” (Mercury Nashville) A cover tune, yes, but also the definitive vehicle for Chris Stapleton’s rugged, soulful cry; a pledge of seen-it-all survival and tender devotion that doubles as a breezy nod to country traditionalism. (Read the critic’s notebook)

8. Alessia Cara “Here” (Def Jam) “I’m sorry if I seem uninterested,” Alessia Cara sings at the top of this simmering anthem of sullen introversion, sounding the farthest thing from contrite. Her distance and her judgment are inarguable, as is the sensual register of her singing.

9. Future “Commas” (A1/Freebandz/Epic) Don’t even bother Future with the tedium of counting his own money, as he affirms on this ominous, buoyant boast track, with a hook that won’t quit.

10. Ashley Monroe “The Blade” (Warner Bros. Nashville) The title track of Ashley Monroe’s exquisite third album wields a timeless metaphor at a new angle of incision, clear-eyed about the cruel asymmetries of heartbreak.

More highlights from the year, as chosen by our critics:

Movies, Television, Classical Music, Classical Albums, Dance, Theater, Art, Books and Performances

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