Top 89 Staff Picks: Hannah Hron, college contributor
by Hannah Hron
December 01, 2015
2015 was the year that mainstream pop finally got weird, and the weird got more and more pop. What else could describe Abel Tesfaye's meteoritic rise from releasing free mixtapes on the Internet under the mysterious moniker of "The Weeknd" to ruling the charts this past summer with his brand of haunting, inebriated millennial love songs? 2015's best and most inventive songs reflected disparate influences: Drake somehow made an elevator-music cha cha into the most danceable track of the year, and Grimes made yesteryear's techno bloops and blips (a la Darude's "Sandstorm") miraculously sound fresh and invigorating in 2015.
Grimes's weird-pop masterpiece Art Angels is a perfect linchpin for the cultural identity of pop at this moment; a beautiful mishmash of conflicting and complementary elements from across the spectrum of music. Within its span of 49 minutes, it includes cheerleader chants, Taiwanese rappers, and Grimes and Janelle Monáe's brand of neofeminism ("Wrap my curls all around the world/ Throw my pearls all across the floor") on album standout "Venus Fly."
Another staple of indie pop, Lana Del Rey, put out one of the year's strongest singles in the form of a full-fledged pop song — without sacrificing her identity. Though her album, Honeymoon, has some of the lush orchestral sounds that have come to be expected with a Lana album, the strongest material on it is the material that unabashedly chases pop.
There was incredibly strong non-pop material as well: Father John Misty and Courtney Barnett both put out albums full of biting lyrics and catchy hooks, Deafheaven and Screaming Females brought some heavier material out into the music world, and Kendrick Lamar released his acclaimed second album that had some of the funkiest, most poignant material of the year. With distinguished music being released from a range of distinct genres — but particularly the long-maligned and dismissed style of pop — this past year's releases will go down as some of the catchiest, most original compositions of the 2010s. In no particular order...
Top ten songs of 2015
"REALiTi" - Grimes
"Pedestrian at Best" - Courtney Barnett
"King Kunta" - Kendrick Lamar
"The Hills" - The Weeknd
"Hotline Bling" - Drake
"High by the Beach" - Lana Del Rey
"Raising the Skate" - Speedy Ortiz
"Cream on Chrome" - Ratatat
"Baby Blue" - Deafheaven
"No Comprende" - Low
Five best albums of 2015
To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar
Rose Mountain - Screaming Females
Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit - Courtney Barnett
I Love You, Honeybear - Father John Misty
Art Angels - Grimes
Hannah Marie Hron is a student at Hamline University who hopes to continue a career in music journalism after graduation.