2015 was a great year for new music in all genres. Near the end of 2014, one of what would turn out to be my favorite albums of 2015 leaked onto the internet — The Decemberists What a Terrible World… But January, on the same date, saw the release of another great album, the comeback record No Cities to Love from Sleater-Kinney. But I don’t keep track of release dates really, I keep track of upcoming shows and events. So I can’t say for sure when I discovered other albums save for Grimes’ Art Angels which released near the end of the year. Both Grimes and Decemberists received slightly higher points when I was doing my Pazz & Jop tabulations for Village Voice given how much play both those albums received.
I did try to pick albums that were from a wide variety of genres which is perhaps why this site statistical site Furia considered me a “Centrist” for 2015. But I would have thought I was less centric — however I did select many of the titles that made the Top 10, I haven’t perused the site too much, the amount of data is crazy to review in the few minutes I am taking to get this post up. 
Anyways, check out my best/favorite albums and songs of 2015 after the jump. Click the album cover to visit Amazon and purchase the disc, watch the videos for the singles and be my friend on Spotify. Hopefully 2016 is half as good as 2015 for music.
RIP David Bowie.
Albums (alphabetical order):
+ two that didn’t make the P&J list
Singles (alphabetical order):
Christine and the Queens, “Tilted” / Atlantic / Elektra / Warner Bros.
Colm Mac Con Iomaire, “The White Boat-Liam O’Reilly” / Plateau
Courtney Barnett, “Pedestrian at Best” / Mom + Pop
Father John Misty, “Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)” / Sub Pop
Florence & the Machine, “Third Eye” / Island / Republic
Grimes, “Kill V. Maim” / 4AD
Josh Ritter, “Homecoming” / Pytheas Recordings / Thirty Tigers
Kendrick Lamar, “King Kunta” / Top Dawg Entertainment
Ryley Walker, “Primrose Green” / Dead Oceans
Tallest Man on Earth, “Sagres” / Dead Oceans
+ a few that were considered for my P&J list but didn’t make it are listed below and a bunch of these tracks and more are in the Spotify playlist below:
Anderson East, “Satisfy Me” / New Elektra
Selena Gomez, “Good for You” / Interscope
Jidenna, “Classic Man”
James Bay, “Hold Back the River”
Walk the Moon, “Shut up and Dance”
Jason Isbell, “The Life you Choose”
Ólafur Arnalds and Alice Sara Ott, “Reminisce”
Say Lou Lou, “Nothing but a Heartbeat”
