For years I’ve had a challenging relationship with year-end rankings — they seemed exclusionary or faux-conclusory, or even arbitrary. But this year I decided to throw my hat into the ring and make lists of the Top 15 Songs of 2015, Top 15 Albums of 2015, and Top 15 EPs of 2015.
In my attempt to avoid being any of those “-ary” or “-ory” things described above, I tried to approach this thing using the best method I could conjure up: For today’s list, the top songs, I combed through 100s of my favorites of the year, including those that I’ve written about and some that I haven’t for any number of various reasons. Then I assessed their initial and enduring impact on me emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.
Here are the brilliant tracks that came out of that process:
1. Chromatics – “Shadow”
2. Forêt de Vin – “Carol”
3. Paperwhite – “Get Away”
4. College, feat. Nola Wren – “Save The Day (Maethelvin Remix)”
5. ROOM8, feat. King Deco – “No Hard Feelings”
6. St. Lucia – “Dancing on Glass”
7. Holy Visions – “Cut Me Out”
8. Oneohtrix Point Never – “Sticky Drama”
9. Nola Wren – “Venom”
10. Kristine – “Everybody”
11. Slope 114 – “Lost in Space”
12. Marcus Marr – “Brown Sauce”
13. Negative Gemini – “You Never Knew”
14. SaiR – “Remember When”
15. Paradise Walk – “Summer Heat”
